CLEVELAND — In a small, tranquil community garden in Cleveland, young ladies planted seeds with a goal to grow beautiful, strong vegetables. But what they don’t know yet is that as they come back once a month to check on the progress, they’ll notice the seeds aren’t the only things that are growing.
“This space is for them to mingle, interact, but just learn how to be safe in this space,” said Dameyonna Willis, founder of the nonprofit Queen IAM. “Like I can be myself. I can be goofy, I can be weird or whatever people may think is wrong. I can be that in the space with other girls.”
Willis is passionate about helping young girls grow up with confidence and self-respect. She has a 5-year-old daughter named Kylee. So she started the nonprofit Queen IAM in 2016.
“I wanted to fix that self-love piece, that confidence, our self-esteem,” Willis said. “Like, you are somebody. You mean something to someone, and you are enough. Peer pressure is a huge thing with the age range that we serve, and so realizing that these girls may not be able to be who they truly are because they don’t know what that looks like.”
She hosts virtual and in-person meetings where girls can learn to paint and garden among other things. With each activity, she ties in a social-emotional lesson.
“We have done yoga, Zumba, cake decorating, tie dye,” she said. “We have done embroidery, sewing, anything. We do a lot of fun stuff. And we really — the goal is to help young queens really learn how worthy they are and how the crown is on their head, even if it’s not visible to see that they feel it inside of who they are.”
Willis focuses on four core areas: College career readiness, health and wellness, financial literacy and service learning. She introduces the girls to people working different jobs in the community so they can start to meet role models and explore their interests. She wants the young ladies to learn about themselves, how to express themselves and be who they are.
“I’m connecting them with other amazing women locally who do awesome stuff that’s coming to share their skills and our talents with my girls,” she said. “So they’re getting exposed to OK, wow, like this is the news anchor I see on TV or oh, this is the woman that creates the shirts that I see like being able to be exposed to different careers. We had a pastry chef one time so that just keeps their mind moving, and their wheels turning as they’re learning more about who they are and what they like to do.”
And the girls are soaking it in.
“Some things I’ve learned through Queen IAM is to treat people how they want to be treated,” said Forever Lewis, who is 12 and a member of Queen IAM. “Respect others and don’t think negative. Like some people think negatively about themselves. And I just tend, like ever since I’ve been in this group, I tend not to be negative to myself.”
Forever Lewis, Queen IAM member
In a world that so often tries to knock girls down, Queen IAM works to lift girls up.
“Being able to understand how important it is to be an individual, how important it is to believe in yourself, what that looks like for you,” Willis said. “So if you want to wear those funky, cool shoes, and you want to wear them because you are happy enough to have them on and no matter what anybody says, how much they don’t like them. You like them, and that’s enough because you’re enough so that’s so important, because there’s so many different things around them that is telling them to dress like this, talk like this, walk like this, dance like this. What is it like to be myself?”
For more information on Queen IAM you can visit here.
