Little Hands Tackle Big Problems

The sign might have been easy to overlook on a sweltering Sunday. After all, it was designed by glittery Crayola markers.

But inside the New World Communities Center on Bedford Avenue and Madison Street, big things were afoot, and very small people were calling the shots.

Enter seven-year-old Taylor and six-year-old Bahiyyah, both second graders, and chairgirls of the board of Bed-Stuy’s newest non-profit: Girlfriends for Change.

They were holding a food drive on one of their last summer afternoons and donating the canned goods to City Harvest, with a little assistance from their parents.

But just because their parents were there to help, this was not compulsory community service.

Bahiyyah’s father, Rafer, tells the story best of the group’s founding: “One day I was sitting on the couch,” said Rafer. “And she comes downstairs, and she says, 'Dad, I gotta tell you something.’ I’m thinking, ‘What happened, did something happen at camp?' She says, ‘I want to end hunger.’ I say, ‘Okay, you want to end hunger. What are your ideas?’”

She laid out some ideas, and then she had to come up with a name for her organization. She had been inspired by Disney’s Friends for Change Games, a show on the Disney Channel where youngsters compete to raise money for charities, and Rafer encouraged her to put her own spin on it, to make it her own.

The two agreed that she would need her girlfriends’ help to tackle such massive issues, so she came up with Girlfriends for Change.

Rafer knew what he had to do. He contacted his friend Bernice, who runs the Brooklyn Prom Project, a non-profit organization that helps disadvantaged high school girls get the expensive formal wear and tickets for their high school prom.

She and Rafer had worked together on an early childhood literacy project the previous summer.  “But on this one, they run the show,” explained Bernice of the young members.

Bernice’s daughter Taylor, a friend of Bahiyyah’s, was on board as soon as she heard about the opportunity. “I thought it was a good idea,” Taylor told Bed-Stuy Patch. Bernice and Rafer put out the word to others, and the group has grown to five members, with four year old Jewel as their youngest recruit.

Though the group is still young, both literally and figuratively, they have big plans. Asked about their goals, Taylor offered that they wanted to “defeat [homelessness] and help people who don’t have food to have food.”

“And clothes and electricity,” Bahiyyah chimed in.

“And things to have that they don’t have,” added Taylor.

Right now, Girlfriends for Change isn’t letting the press know all the details of their plans to fix the world, but they did give Bed-Stuy Patch a few clues as to what they would be up to in the coming months.

“A clothing drive, stop bullying,” were a couple of Bahiyyah’s ideas. Further down the line, they’d like to help Haiti by preventing natural disasters from damaging the poor island nation. If they can’t change weather or seismological patterns, they’d like to “buy them houses” and “give them food.”

Bernice added that they might, as a fundraising project, and continuing with the fashion-oriented work she has done with the Prom Project, “[have] them make t-shirts, maybe totes that they decorate themselves and sell...just a little line of their own.”

While the girls remain carefree and preciously idealistic about their goals, Rafer sees his mission, as a father, in more serious terms.

“Every time we want to do something safe, fun and constructive with our children, we usually have to leave Bed-Stuy,” Rafer said. “As much as I can, even though I’m not a girlfriend,” he said, laughing, “I want to address that. Because that’s not going to continue. It can’t be allowed to continue.”

“Kids are sitting at home dreaming of ways to change the world every day,” said Rafer. "The [question] is: Do children have the community support to express their best mind?”

Until then, it’s Bahiyyah and Taylor and their girlfriends, against the world, hunger, hurricanes and whatever else that may come. As far as expansion is concerned, the sky is the limit.

Well, that, and one other rule...

“No boys allowed,” they told Bed-Stuy Patch. “It’s Girlfriends for Change!”