Faith-Based Sorority Gives Girls Direction
On the runway, the sorority girls were in control.
As they walked their walks and posed, an audience of mostly women encouraged them.
“You go girl!” the announcer said. “Strut your stuff!”
The applause at this Mother’s Day brunch and fashion show at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles is about more than fancy clothes. The applause is for what these girls are becoming off the runway: confident young women who are ready for college, financially literate and prepared for leadership.
The girls are members of Imani Phi Christ Sorority Inc., a non-profit organization founded to help girls develop into healthy young women who “can stand on their own two feet.” The group also offers them friendship -- trusting relationships with girls their age, who share their faith and their commitment to success.
“It really helps me to have sisters,” said Breannah Wilson, 17, a senior at Hamilton High School. “This is a real sisterhood.”
Los Angeles native Nicole Roberts created the sorority out of concern that negative forces were shaping the lives of too many girls.
After the 1992 riots, Roberts was living her dream life. She had graduated from San Diego State University and landed a job in the entertainment industry at a casting agency.
Things were good for her, but the riots revealed the needs in her Inglewood community. “I would come home from work every day and see youth struggling,” she said. “I said, ‘There has to be something I can do.’ ”
At First AME Church, where she is a member, Roberts asked about programs for girls. She learned there were none. “Why don’t you start one?” the youth minister said.
Roberts was just 23 and had no experience working with youth. What she had were memories of her own girlhood mentor and others who had guided her.
“That mentor went to college and talked to me about college. It gave me a different perspective on my life.”
Using her own experiences, she created Imani Phi Christ in 1993. Imani means faith in Swahili. The sorority offers girls mentors and weekly workshops on a variety of issues. Currently there are three church-based chapters and plans to expand to other churches.
Over the years 200 girls have been initiated into the sorority; 83% have gone to college, Roberts said.
The girls have gone from shy listeners to leaders, from girls with attitudes to team players.
“It keeps you sane,” said Heidi Holmes, 16, who attends King/Drew Medical Magnet High School. “If you need someone to talk to, they’re always there.”
Theresa Marshall, 26, started in the group when she was a 15-year-old who would never speak up. She learned to speak her mind because her opinions matter, she said.
Now a mentor, she “tries to reach [the girls] where they are, to help pull them up.”
Marshall is like many other members.
“They graduate, come back and give back,” said Amelia Way, an organizer, who was initiated as a teen and now serves as West Coast director.
Every activity offers the girls a chance to learn, Way said. Speakers at the brunch offered wisdom. Denise Hunter, wife of First AME Senior Pastor John Joseph Hunter, and Gail Choice, an independent writer and producer, both encouraged the girls to love themselves and God.
“Be proud of who you are and don’t let anybody tell you what you can’t be,” Choice said.
The brunch is held each year in honor of Jan-E Luckie, a sorority member who embodied Imani Phi Christ’s principles.
Luckie was a junior at Tuskegee University in Alabama when she was forced to return home because of leukemia. But she remained committed to the group and was helping organize a brunch when she died in 2000. Luckie’s mother and other proud relatives filled a table at the brunch Saturday.
“It’s just an honor to have had a daughter who was loved by so many people,” said Jean Luckie.
