We're well over half way!!
As of February 24, 2024
$65,794 has been paid!!
Thank you!
Remaining: $48, 398
(Check updates here: Check Progress )
Buying Back Dr. Giavanni Washington’s School Loan debt is an act of restoration that directly impacts her life and legacy.
“Dr. G” is the creator of the Black Goddess Within Oracle deck and an Ancestral Restoration expert who guides the creation of decolonial legacies and seeds equitable futures.
This is one way that white people and others who have had access to intergenerational wealth and financial supports can take sincere action to create more equitable futures today.
Dr. G’s dynamic history and legacy includes following her life’s passion into higher education and earning her PhD in Culture and Performance. Taking that path has meant accruing burdensome school loan debt, debt that is NOT experienced the same way by many white and other non-Black people.
Because of the many ways that white supremacy systematically enacts anti-Black racist discrimination and violence, Black people have been purposefully kept from accessing the systems that support the building of intergenerational wealth and other financial safety nets that many white people receive.
Dr. G shouldn’t be penalized for pursuing advanced education in this inequitable system.
Buying back the discriminatory debt that Black women disproportionately carry in pursuing higher education, moves us toward more equitable economies while freeing their bodies of work, passions and lives to be more fully realized in the world without the burden that school loan debt places upon them, their families and legacies.
Black women shouldn't be financially punished for pursuing higher education in inequitable systems.
Now is a GREAT time to make a contribution because interest accrual is temporarily halted on Federal student loans!
Rates on the small loans that make up this total are as high as 6.8%. However, right now ALL payments will go directly toward the principal meaning we can pay this off more quickly.
Will you join us today by contributing and sharing this endeavor with your friends and networks?
We need help from people like you who share the value of this effort and are willing to help us reach as many others as we can to meet this goal fully.
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About Dr. Giavanni:
Many of you coming to this page already have the pleasure of knowing Dr. Giavanni Washington but, if you do not, Dr. Giavanni Washington is the Founder of RhythmQuest, former Executive Director for Viver Brasil Dance Company and creator of the Black Goddess Within Oracle Deck. She is a space holder for Afro-Diasporic Arts, a Facilitator, Author, Speaker, Creator, intuitive percussive healer and Ancestral Healer & Guide. She is a daughter, wife, mother, sister, friend, revered member of many communities, a vibrant soul and an exceptionally gifted listener who is loved and admired by many for the ways she laughs, leads, lives, loves and cares.
In her words: she is a Black woman who comes from a long line of educators, moonshine makers and medicine women who took away pain even when the rupture left them with only whatever was in the pantry.
She views enslavement as a rupture in her past, a condition in which many of her forebears found themselves. For generations her family, and other like hers, have been confronting the sequelae of slavery "with whatever is in the pantry."
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How To Make Direct Payments:
We prefer if you can make a direct payment to Mohela, the school loan company, because it avoids fees being taken out and all of your dollars go directly toward the loan. It takes less than five minutes and you can find easy instructions for how to do that here: ToolsForThePeople
This endeavor has a large goal to meet. Please check back on our progress and consider paying more than once. We welcome multiple payments!
Thank you for your contributions and support.
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Did you know:
- READ: twelve years after starting college, white men have paid off 44% of their student loans, while Black women owe 13% more?
- READ:that college-educated Black women who work full time, on average earn $0.63 for every dollar earned by white men, compared with $0.79 for white women?
- READ: that black women are graduating with at least $30,400 in debt - compared with $22,000 for their white counterparts?
It is also important to say that Black people are owed reparations in incalculably deep ways. Money alone cannot make this right because we also need to do much more individual and collective work to undo the many ways racial discrimination and violence endangers Black people in nearly every facet of their lives regardless of their wealth status. However, this is one way to take meaningful action.
Our gratitude for this idea and model is owed to author, poet and social justice activist Sonya Renee Taylor of The Body Is Not An Apology (@sonyareneetaylor, @thebodyisnotanapology) who brought forth the call to #buybackblackdebt on Instagram in and also to Brenda Barros Rivera (@createsaferelationships). Please follow Sonya and the hashtag to learn more!
