A Long Walk Home is a Chicago-based national nonprofit with a mission to use art to empower young people to end violence against girls and women. For 23 years, ALWH has centered Black girls and young women, creating spaces where art becomes a tool for healing, leadership, advocacy, and social change. A Long Walk Home began when artists and sisters Salamishah Tillet and Scheherazade Tillet first brought that vision to life through Story of a Rape Survivor (SOARS), a groundbreaking multimedia performance in which Salamishah shared her healing journey after surviving sexual assault in college, while Scheherazade’s photographs documented her sister’s recovery. Their collaboration transformed a deeply personal story into a public call for healing, justice, and action and became the foundation for A Long Walk Home. Today, ALWH empowers girls and young women to use art to organize their communities and build a world free from gender-based and racial violence. Through an intergenerational collective of young people, artists, activists, healers, and scholars, ALWH transforms stories into action, advancing research, public art, and advocacy to protect the health, safety, and well-being of girls and women.
In 2009, ALWH established the Girl/Friends Leadership Institute, a year-long leadership program that trains and organizes Black girls into artists and activists in Chicago. The Girl/Friends Institute is made up of various girl-led and focused initiatives, including after-school programs, summer leadership institutes, parent engagement programs, public art and exhibitions, research projects, alumni development, emergency funds, and curriculum development. To date, ALWH has trained more than 700 Girl/Friends.
The Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund will support ALWH’s Art of Leadership: Black Girls Initiative, a two-year effort (2027–2029) to expand the Girl/Friends Leadership Institute and launch the organization’s first formal alumni program, building a continuum of support from recruitment through alumni engagement. The first component recruits and supports the program’s 20th cohort of girls from Chicago’s South and West Sides, reaching more than 2,000 girls across under-resourced communities like North Lawndale, Englewood, and South Shore through 30 workshops and a spring break retreat for 300 girls. From there, participants spend two years in programming across four areas: arts education, leadership development, social justice education, and healing-centered wellness, each paired with a teaching artist and a program alum to forge an intergenerational pipeline. That pipeline continues through ALWH’s first formal alumni program, engaging more than 600 alumni ages 18 to 28 with continued access to therapy, professional development, college care packages, and a two-day out-of-state healing and leadership retreat, with alumni in turn mentoring the new cohort. Together, these components will reach nearly 3,000 Black girls and young adults with the tools they need to lead, heal, and advocate for change in their communities.
For more information about A Long Walk Home, please visit the organization’s website.
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