If you find yourself overwhelmed by all the problems around you, it might be hard to believe that one person can make a difference in the lives of others. In her book How to Make an African Quilt: The Story of the Patchwork Project of Segou, Mali (Nighthawk Press), Bonnie Lee Black shows us that the desire to help other women, combined with vision and taking action can change lives.

Bonnie went to Gabon, Central Africa, through the Peace Corps, in 1996, at the age of 51, to teach health and nutrition to women. After her two years of service, she realized she loved Africa so much that she wanted to stay longer.  So she traveled to Segou, Mali, and continued to look for ways of being of service. When a group of Malian seamstresses visiting Bonnie’s house saw a wall quilt that she made and one of the women asked her what it was,  Bonnie replied, “Patchwork.” The seamstress said, “We must learn how to do that,” and Bonnie’s next project, The Patchwork Project of Segou, Mali, was born. For her remaining nearly three years in Mali, she taught Malian seamstresses how to do patchwork quilting, in the hopes that one day their work could be sold over the Internet.

In the book, Bonnie describes her feeling of being at home in Africa. She says, “For reasons even I didn’t fully understand, I felt I must stay.” As she taught groups of women how to quilt, she was accepted and embraced as a sister by the women of the Patchwork Project. The women who learned to quilt saw the way that the project could make a difference in their lives. One of Bonnie’s students, Fatou Sogoba, said:

“The Patchwork Project is a good project of development. It is a project that can succeed here because Malian textiles are very rich. It will also permit women to have money, which will make them economically independent.”

At a recent book release event in Taos, New Mexico, Bonnie shared more about the reasons that quilting was a natural craft for the women of Mali. The area has a long history of growing cotton and using it for textiles. Bonnie said, “The people of Mali are proud of their traditions, and their love of cotton runs deep.” She said that all the steps in producing cotton goods are performed in Mali, from growing cotton to weaving fabric to celebrating the creation of beautiful clothing and wall hangings. Because it is so hot in Mali year-round, the idea of using a quilt to keep warm at night was a foreign one. But the women of Segou immediately saw how scraps of fabric could be used, rather than wasted, to produce a beautiful cloth blanket for people in colder climates. The women attended Bonnie’s classes to learn how to quilt with the intent that they would continue to teach other women. The classes also undertook commissions, such as a large quilt to be given as a wedding present to Bonnie’s nephew and his new bride.

When Bonnie said that she felt at home in Africa, some of the women commented that Bonnie had surely been African in a former life. In contemplating this possibility, Bonnie began to envision herself as a young girl born in Mali, but stolen by slave traders. Bonnie’s vision of herself in a former life, as a woman named Jeneba, becomes yet another square stitched into the many stories in her new book that create a patchwork pattern.

The fictional character of Jeneba was a slave on a plantation in South Carolina. She eventually bears children, fathered by the plantation owner. Jeneba is also a quilt maker who uses her designs to help show the way to escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad. By the end of the book, Jeneba’s story comes together with the quilters of Mali, showing how lives that have been unraveled can be made whole again.

For more on Bonnie and her work with the Peace Corps and in Mali, read our profile here or visit Bonnie’s website.

If you are looking for some inspiration and a bit of advice on how to kick start your business and sharpen your message, you may want to talk to Lucinda Cross. She left her corporate job, which was working behind the scenes to make other people look good, in order to step out in front and start her own business.

In addition to advising entrepreneurs and speaking on panels, Lucinda has written two books. Corporate Mom Drop Outs contains the stories of women who left corporate jobs and made their own success working from home. Her second book The Road to Redemption: Overcoming Life’s Detours, Obstacles, and Challenges, advises us on how to grow and embrace the opportunities that life brings to us. It was published in 2012 and has been an Amazon best seller ever since.

What Lucinda loves to do is work with women to help hone their message. She helps them set a vision and be clear on it, along with identifying ways to make money with their business. She says “It is important to have a vision. Women can use their words as powerful vessels to heal. They can use the power of the tongue and pen to make a difference.” Read more…

What can you say about a woman who left a successful catering business in New York City to volunteer for the Peace Corps in the hopes of empowering African women and children and in the process cut off the head of a poisonous snake –  in her kitchen, with a machete! Well, you could say that Bonnie Lee Black has swagger. And you’d be right!

Bonnie had her own catering business in New York, serving the rich and famous. After ten years in the business, she was tired of New York and tired of waiting on rich people. A breast cancer scare prompted her to look at her life and ponder how she would like to live. Bonnie wanted to do something new with her life, something gratifying and purposeful.

So she decided to join the Peace Corps and was sent to Gabon, in Central  Africa to work with women and children on improving their nutrition and health. Ten hours away from the Peace Corps office, in Gabon’s capital Libreville, Bonnie worked independently, using all her creativity to engage the women and children in the small town where she was posted. She made puppets to entertain and teach the kids and taught nutritious cooking to the women.“It was like a play for me. I felt so creative. I had a purpose and felt useful,” Bonnie said.

Read more…

Happy International Women’s Day to all the women with Swagger out there! Today is even more exciting for us though, because it’s also the second anniversary of The Girl’s Guide to Swagger! The site was launched on March 8, 2011 in honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, both of which honor American women and “sheroes” who made a historical and significant contribution to the United States.

International Women’s Day is celebrated each year on March 8. Click here to read more about the 2013 events being held across the globe to celebrate.

In 1987, after being petitioned by the National Women’s History Project, Congress designated the month of March, 1987 as “Women’s History Month.”  Between 1988 and 1994, Congress passed additional resolutions requesting and authorizing the President to proclaim March of each year as Women’s History Month.  Since 1995, Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama have issued a series of annual proclamations designating the month of March as “Women’s History Month.”

Read more…

Are you a DIVA? On the DIVA Download, hosts Traci and Tosha describe DIVAS as: diverse, involved, value-driven and active. The show features women working to empower girls and their moms. Swagger Founder Cindy Brown appeared on the show February 26.

She talks about how she found her swagger and why it is important to have celebrity role models who show us swagger. You can listen to the segment on swagger here.

Whoopi Goldberg

Rosa Parks

This month, The Girl’s Guide to Swagger wishes to acknowledge African American History Month, otherwise known as Black History Month and salute all African American women working to make the world a better place.

These incredible women are an inspiration to us and many other minority women and girls who seek influential positive role models to help them move forward in the world.

We would like to especially acknowledge and suggest that we remember those women who know how to approach the world with swagger such as Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, Maya Angelou, Mavis Staples, Condoleezza Rice and Aretha Franklin. If you need a little encouragement to get through your day this month, we suggest you look up these women to learn how they each overcame adversity and learned how to walk through life with high confidence to accomplish their goals.

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Do you remember when Hillary Clinton was a candidate for President? There was a moment captured and played on YouTube showing a woman asking Republican candidate John McCain “How do we beat the bitch?” After a bit of searching around, McCain finally says “that’s an excellent question.” Only later in his response does he say that he “respects” Clinton. Columnist Marie Cocco points out that Clinton was caught in the gender dilemma that many of us have experienced.

“She is in the same double bind that women business executives know so well, the subject of a recent study by Catalyst, a group that studies women’s economic advancement. Women executives are  ‘Damned if You Do, Doomed if you Don’t.’ In this report, the oldest stereotypes are revealed again in the newest research. “When women act in gender-consistent ways- that is, in a cooperative, relationship focused manner – they are perceived as ‘too soft’ a leader…When women act in gender-inconsistent ways – that is, when they act authoritatively, show ambition, and focus on the task – they are viewed as ‘too tough.’ The might be acting leader-like, but not lady-like. Ergo the B-word.”

I love Hillary’s response to the attacks she experienced during the campaign. She said, “people are not attacking me because I’m a woman. They’re attacking me because I’m ahead.” Many commentators feel like she was being attacked for both reasons.

Perhaps you remember the novelty item sold in catalogs – the Hillary nut cracker – the implication being that Hillary was a tough, scary woman out to break men’s nuts. I thought it was an outrageous, sexist product and made a note not to shop in those catalogs anymore.

Hillary did not receive her party’s nomination for President. There were many jokes at the time showing red necks saying they would rather have a black man than a woman in the White House – anyone but a woman.

Hillary was appointed Secretary of State by President Obama on January 21, 2009. Some people have charged that she served more as a celebrity decoy than a diplomat. I find the charge absurd. Read more…

Gretchen Cawthon

Throughout history and even today, women are told by men what they can and can’t do. Fortunately, the human spirit allows us the free will to decide for ourselves what we can do. We just have to tap into our inner confidence.

In 2005, when Gretchen Cawthon was told by a man that “women just don’t do web design,” something snapped inside her and she set out to prove him wrong.

“I was actually co-owner of a drum company … it was kind of a start up and we began working on a marketing plan and I was pretty much the fulltime marketing director. When it came down to the website, our business partner told my husband,  ‘I’ll handle the website, women just don’t do web design,’” said Gretchen.

She left the drum business shortly after that. Because she already had a great deal of experience teaching computers on a professional level, she decided to begin researching web design and learning how to build one herself.

“I was brought up with a computer in the house my entire life. So I just picked it up on my own. I knew a lot about computer programs and applications and so I taught people,” said Gretchen. “I went to the library and checked out every possible book I could on web design. In about 2 weeks, I put together the website the way I wanted it,” she said.

Read more…

Shantay Carter

Integrity. A word defined as “soundness of moral character; honesty or the state of being whole, or undiminished.” Integrity is strong value for the Girls Guide to Swagger  and we look for the opportunity to recognize organizations who support this value.  Today we are featuring Shantay Carter and her organization, Women Of Integrity, Inc.

Shantay is on a mission to support and empower women in her community to foster the confidence they need to accomplish their future goals. The organization carries out their mission by offering volunteer services, professional mentoring programs and also participating in community outreach events throughout Hempstead, New York in Long Island and other near-by communities.

Carter is a woman of strong identity and by nature, she has always liked to help people. Over the years, she transferred those skills into a successful career as a nurse and is now refining those skills even further, along with nearly 30 other volunteers working with Women of Integrity. Her motivation for starting the organization began when she noticed that many women, especially young women and girls in her community didn’t seem to possess self-confidence needed to live well-developed lives. Read more…

Holly Elle

“No labels everywhere…all around!” That’s pretty much Holly Elle’s motto. And if you listen to her music then you certainly wouldn’t be surprised by that statement. The newest rising pop singer scowls at the idea of regurgitating more of the same and praises individuality among everyone.

Elle’s latest releases entitled Freak and Don’t Come Home from her EP Infinitude, which came out this past August, reveal the creativity of a young woman who is unafraid to challenge bullying and encourages free expression of the heart. Her strong message against bullying promotes individuality and is tremendously complimented by her melodious vocals. She has a knack for inspiring confidence in her music that won’t get lost within the endless reproductions of the usual pop trends.

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