“We are so excited about this. This is an amazing opportunity to highlight black women’s health and to share that message and the issues we are addressing in Wisconsin and Dane County, specifically, and how our community has really pulled behind us and our campaign to show support and commitment in what we’re trying to do – to change the tide of black women’s health in our community,” says Lisa Peyton-Caire, CEO and president of The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness. “This is a wonderful platform to do all that.”
Madison’s Lisa Peyton-Caire, whose Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness works to empower black women and girls to build and sustain healthy, thriving, wellness-centered lives, recently found out that she has been selected as one the five heroes from across the United States that will be honored at a live celebration for the First Annual 2019 GoFundMe Community-Nominated Heroes in San Francisco on Nov. 14.
“This is soooooo cool,” Peyton-Caire tells Madison365. “This is going to be a big deal. I am so excited about it.”
A recent outpouring of community support had just pushed the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness over it’s $100,000 fundraising goal through a recent GoFundMe and with that money they are getting set to open a Black Women’s Health and Wellness Center on Madison’s west side in November.
Peyton-Caire has used GoFundMe many times in the past for smaller campaigns. “This has been our biggest fundraising attempt to date,” she says.
“I think it was around June when a wonderful woman from the community that I had never met before messaged me about the GoFundMe Heroes competition and that they were looking for submissions for people who are using the platform and doing life-changing community work,” Peyton-Caire continues.
Peyton-Caire would soon find out that the GoFundMe Heroes program was celebrating people who are making a positive impact in their neighborhoods, communities, and beyond. For the first time, they were asking people in the GoFundMe community across the United States to nominate someone they believe is a GoFundMe Hero.
“A few weeks later, I got a call from GoFundMe saying that I had been nominated and that they needed to conduct an interview and that they had received thousands of submissions around the country,” Peyton-Caire says.
Peyton-Caire went through the interview process which she says was about 45 minutes long. She was one of the many community members nationwide who shared stories about those they were helping and how they were inspiring others to make a difference in their local communities. They called her back three weeks later to do a second follow-up interview.
“At the end of that call, they had notified me that I had been selected as one of five projects around the country,” she says.
As a GoFundMe Community-Nominated Hero, they are going to fly Peyton-Caire and her daughter out to San Francisco on Nov. 13-14 where she will be able to share her story at the GoFundMe Heroes Celebration. The people behind these five winning fundraisers will have the opportunity to spread awareness for their causes in front of a live audience and inspire others to take action in their community.
“On the 14th of November there will be a big celebration where I will have to give a speech that will be live cast through their online channels all over the country that evening,” Peyton-Caire says.
In the meantime, GoFundMe sent a camera crew to Madison do a small video about the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness at the new Women’s Health and Wellness Center, 6601 Grand Teton Plaza, on Madison’s west side.
“The video and photos will air at the celebration. People all over the country will be exposed to our organization and our work,” Peyton-Caire says. “They came and shot footage of me and our team in the center as we get ready to open here. We told them that they’re going to need to do a follow-up story after we open the center and do a progress update later this year after we get the doors open.”
Six members of Peyton-Caire’s Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness team have arranged to travel with her to San Francisco.
“While we’re out there, we’re going to host one of our walks,” Peyton-Caire says. “We’ve already started reaching out to other black women groups out in San Francisco and the Bay Area to tell them that we’re coming.
“We’re going to make the most out of this opportunity,” she adds. “It’s such an honor.”
