Morgan Dixon is the co-founder of Girl Trek, which is an organization that encourages women to walk together and connect worldwide.
Girl Trek’s Black History Bootcamp is a 21-day walking and meditation series for women to remember where they came from and to gather strength to help them in their everyday lives.
Dixon briefly shared which Black history legends have been highlighted and what other programs are available.
What inspired Black History Bootcamp and how can we get involved?
When the pandemic first started we were like, “My God, women are just all over.” We’re organized in the 1,000 Blackest neighborhoods in America, but wherever you are, you can walk with Girl Trek. In those neighborhoods, we knew women can no longer connect because of COVID. My best friend and Girl Trek’s co-founder, Vanessa Garrison, and I thought, “What can we do? Well, we can personally walk with people.” We got on our phones, old-school like earbuds, put them in, dialed into my friend, and we walked at the same time, and we invited a million women to walk with us.
What happened is women started logging in live across America. We said, “OK, if we have 30 minutes of airtime with a million Black women, what do we want to talk about?” We want to talk about the heroes in Black history who have made it possible for us to live our healthiest, most fulfilled life. It will give us a blueprint for what liberation, love, justice and joy looks like. We picked 21 heroes that we loved each season. We did everybody from Stokely Carmichael and the Black Power Movement, we did Harriet Tubman, but then we started getting one level deeper. Since then, it has become viral, we have won all kinds of webinars, we have millions of downloads, and you can listen to it on Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast.
What other programs does Girl Trek offer?
The first thing to note is that every third Saturday, we do something called Welcome Walks. Anyone listening can host a welcome walk, all you do is go to GirlTrek.org, we have a 15-minute training that you listen to as you walk out, and then you could just think about what you’re going do for another 15 minutes coming back. It’s so easy.
Essentially, what you do is invite a friend or a sister to walk with you, you put a flag on our map to say here we are walking. We do that once a month to welcome women into our movement. Now, first of all, this is a crisis facing Black women, so we are unapologetic that we are the ones solving this health crisis in our bodies. Within that, we have tremendous diversity in our community. Where else do you find a place where Black women intergenerationally and cross-sectorally can walk, talk and solve problems together? It’s in Girl Trek, and everyone is radically welcome.
