Page 13
POV— THE WOMEN OF FADIA By: Terrence Hazly
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with the talented and gifted leaders of an underrated organization based on reaching the embattled female youth in the Summit County community. Conceived by Yvette Thompson, Fadia( Arabic for“ protect others”) as an organization has existed for two years but the vision had been nurtured since Yvette had been 18.
Founded in the basement of her house while running Miracle Child daycare upstairs, she opened up her home to create an operation devoted to helping better and save the lives young women.
Her counter-part and a lead woman for the organization, Octavia Solomon, has been involved for nine months. She has adapted and maintained a role of mentoring and redirection to help guide, problem solve and encourage the young women of the program. Our conversations lead me inside to finding out true awareness and humanitarianism does still exist. Not only by working within the organization with the ladies, the also schedule outside events such as volunteering at the battered women’ s shelter. They have what is called a“ Purple Party” during October supporting domestic violence awareness month which is a gala in ballroom attire and they split the door with the battered women’ s shelter and the other half goes to Fadia for the girls need in the program. They offer“ Speak up, Speak out” every March, events with live entertainment and talent shows to keep the morale of the youth up beat, giving them something to look forward to. Fadia is also ready to start HIV and Lupus awareness. The organization is also working on a documentary movie“ Real Stories about the Girls.”
It was after her grandmothers passing that Yvette took the physical steps in realizing her passion with a group of friends and she hasn’ t looked back. Before Fadia, she was around the wrong crowd of friends that she didn’ t have anything in common with which lead to being involved in bad situations, she has witnessed the abuse, she has seen troubled side of how young girls carry themselves the wrong way looking for love and attention with no one focusing on providing a positive activities to get them away from that lifestyle and out of that mindset. This has leads her to believe that“ most organizations are limited, every