COLUMBUS, Ohio — You can’t believe everything you hear. The same could be said for what you read.
Fran Frazier has been helping young Black girls since the late 80s. This past year, tired of all the emotionally draining violence, the founder of Black Girl Rising, Inc. didn’t want to march. She didn’t want to start a new initiative. She and some friends simply wanted to write.
“We decided that we would write love letters,” she said.
Encouragement. Love. Support.
Frazier has collected nearly 100 letters from Columbus area women who are writing to Franklin County’s young Black girls.
Then, a surprise.
Somehow, some way, students at Democracy Prep Middle School in Harlem, New York, caught wind of Frazier’s idea and wanted to offer their own advice.
Wednesday, those words were gifted.
Black Girl Rising turned those words into books and gave 400 to Franklin County Children’s Services and 100 to the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Domestic Relations Division and Juvenile Branch.
“Our girls are very troubled and need help at this time,” Judge Monica Hawkins said.
If seeing is believing, Judge Hawkins sees it every day; stories of trauma, human trafficking and broken homes. The love letters that will be given to youth, she said, can help turn things around.
“I take away that I matter,” she said. “Somebody loves me. Somebody out there is like me, or they understand me and they hear me.”
Frazier said the books are for those Black girls who often hear of change but seldom believe it, hoping one day they will.
“I’m going to pick that up and I’m going to feel those words because they’re going to be words that I need to hear,” Frazier said.
Frazier said the book with the love letters written by Columbus area women should be released sometime in December.