About Us
Our Mission
A Long Walk Home (ALWH) is a national art organization based in Chicago that empowers young people to end violence against girls and women.
Our Work
A Long Walk Home is a Chicago-based national non-profit that cultivates the next generation of leaders committed to gender equity and racial justice. Founded in 2003 by sisters Salamishah and Scheherazade Tillet, A Long Walk Home works with artists, students, activists, therapists, and community organizations and cultural institutions to elevate marginalized voices, facilitate healing, and activate social change.
Twenty years before #MeToo, A Long Walk Home emerged as a leading organization in the United States using black feminist justice approaches to combat gender violence and racism. A Long Walk Home has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, and on MSNBC.
Our Values
We believe in increasing resources, opportunities, and creative outlets for society’s most vulnerable girls and women: girls and women of color as well as those who identify as low income, having disabilities, gender non-conforming, and LGBTQIA2+.
We believe in increasing resources, opportunities, and creative outlets for society’s most vulnerable girls and women comprised of girls and women of color and includes those who are also low income, have disabilities, are gender non-conforming, and identity as LGBTQIA2+.
We believe in centering the voices of survivors of gender-based violence and racial discrimination in order to remove the obstacles that inhibit them from reaching their full potential.
Our Journey
In 2009, A Long Walk launched Girl/Friends, a youth-centered leadership program in Chicago that amplifies the voices and creative visions of those most vulnerable to violence: girls and women of color.
Girl/Friends is made up of the Summer Initiative at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a 5-week art and activism training for which the girls earn college credit; Girl/Power, an afterschool program in which girls launch social justice campaigns and peer education trainings in their schools, community, and throughout the country. Girl/Friends has graduated over 17 cohorts and empowered 450 youth leaders.