This year’s Black Women’s Wellness Day (BWWDay), hosted by the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness on Sept. 24th and 25th, is all about “Building The Future We Deserve,” as the theme states.
“[The theme] is really a timely message and really demonstrates where we, as the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness, have evolved and where we want to take Black women across Wisconsin — and wherever they’re tuning in from this year across the country — to focus on this message at this critical time in our history and our evolution as Black women in our communities, in this country and in this world,” said Lisa Peyton-Caire, the founder and CEO for the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness (FFBWW). “That message is that it’s time for us to focus our energies intentionally on building the future we deserve.”
BWWDAy 2021 will conduct its 13th annual event virtually, for the second year in a row, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first day of events on Friday, Sept. 24, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., will focus on Black women’s wellness on a macro level. “Assessing the landscape of the status of Black women’s health nationally, the status of Black women’s health statewide, and really talking about social structural drivers that are impacting Black women’s health right now,” Peyton-Caire said.
As such, Friday’s luncheon keynote will be given by Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, senior fellow and adjunct associate professor for the Morehouse School of Medicine, who will speak on “Securing the Health Equity Black Women Deserve.”
Friday’s panelists, speakers, and featured guests include Nyra Jordan, the social impact investment director for American Family Institute for Corporate & Social Impact; State Rep. Shelia Stubbs of Wisconsin District 77; Alex Shade, director of corporate social responsibility at CUNA Mutual Group; Morathi Adams, co-executive director of Freedom, Inc.; and a variety of other leaders and trailblazers from across Wisconsin and the United States.
Saturday’s events, from 7:30 to 4:30 p.m., will then narrow in on how Black women can make actionable steps towards their own “personal, holistic, mind, body, spirit, and financial wellness.”
“Saturday is all about improving your life, elevating your own wellness quotients, getting all the tools and the advice and the guidance and the coaching to really elevate and build the life that we deserve individually and collectively as Black women striving to be our most well-thriving selves in our day-to-day lives,” Peyton-Caire continued.
Saturday will feature a morning meditation and yoga session and a live fitness center as well as a keynote presented by Cheryl Wood, motivational speaker and CEO of Cheryl Wood Empowers.
Of the many sessions, Peyton-Caire highlighted two of the programs she was most excited for: a building wealth session with finance coach Kara Stevens, who Lisa noted is “back by popular demand,” making it her second year as a BWWDay speaker, and a session for Black girls, hosted Friday afternoon.
“There was so much excitement when [Stevens] gave so much incredible, tangible advice and guidance to women [last year] on how to immediately begin to transform their financial lives and build wealth that we brought her back again,” Peyton-Claire said.
Peyton-Caire emphasized that BWWDay is also for young Black girls and that the act of learning about and practicing care for one’s wellness does not have to start in adulthood. This session is sponsored by A Fund for Women.
Beyond the panels and presentations, Peyton-Caire also told Madison365 that progress is being made on the Foundation’s Black women’s health and wellness policy blueprint as well as some of their other projects towards establishing measurable change, evidence of which will be presented at BWWDay.
“There’s an amazing energy and a vibrance and an urgency to our event this year, to this message of building the future we deserve,” Peyton-Caire said, “and we will carry it on into the fall by bringing women into that conversation in a deeper way.”
Those wishing to attend can purchase their tickets here on the FFBWW website. T-shirts for the event can be purchased here.
