Comments (1) Best Goddess of the Sisterhood - 2009
Fatimah Halim
A writer, a singer, an organizer, a teacher, a storyteller, a dancer, and an activist. Fatimah Halim does it all, and she does it for the girls of the Valley.
The founder of GHETTO GIRLS and the president and CEO of Blueprint for Womanhood, this goddess preaches the dignity of the Sisterhood (with a capital "S") and the sanctity of womanhood to African-American and Latina girls from around the Valley who might not have realized they were worth more than their midriffs without her.
GHETTO GIRLS does not mean what you think it does, though. Halim has made sure of that. She has re-envisioned the meaning in an attempt to reverse the negative connotation. Here it stands for: Goddesses Have Every Thing to Offer — Grace, Integrity, Renewal, Love, Sisterhood. Talk about a transformation.
Through GHETTO GIRLS, Halim runs the Rites of Passage Program to help adolescent young women transition into womanhood, along with the Sistah Circle workshops that build a bond of sisterhood among womankind. She is also one of four Valley artists involved in Journey Home, an arts project that works to empower incarcerated women in the Estrella jail.
Halim has been a model of transformation from the start. A girl from the real ghetto of Harlem, Halim was a member, alongside Jimi Hendrix, of the Ghettofighters before moving to Phoenix and beginning a career as a special events coordinator with the city of Phoenix.
She blends genres and destroys definitions. Her work is a mix of the arts, the literary world, the government, the spiritual realm, and the non-profit spectrum. She has toured as a storyteller with Rosa Parks. She has written one book and four plays, filled stadiums with thousands of people and recruited notables such as Stevie Wonder, Martin Sheen, and Coretta Scott King — all to raise awareness and promote understanding among people of all colors and genders.
She even starred in her own one-woman show, She's So G.H.E.T.T.O. — Chronicles of a Ghetto Girl Gone Goddess.
Amen, sister! We're right behind you.
