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Pledge Your PTO

a juneteenth campaign

Your donation directly powers our new FRO Community Center.

In 2025, we opened our Center for Women and Families impacted by Violence on the Southside of Chicago. Every donation of paid time off for Juneteenth will allow us to deepen our capacity to offer holistic wellness services to those who need it most. 

 

While we're elated to have our first space, more work is needed to reach our full potential. When you donate, you directly support the development of the FRO Center, where members of our 5-month wellness BLOOM cohort and broader BLOOM Network receive healing workshops, counseling services, and wellness resources.

Photo by Ash Lane for The TRiiBE®

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With your donation, we’ll...

 

  1. Expand our hours to be open daily, so families face fewer time restrictions when seeking the care they need.

  2. Hire dedicated staff to run wellness programming, therapy, and resource navigation at our center.

  3. Provide critical support like transportation and child care that help cohort members graduate with ease.

  4. Increase the number of women & families we serve, while delivering deeper, longer-term care to reduce harm exposure.

Pay it forward. Donate Today.  

More than 41,000 Americans lose their lives to gun violence every year. Your support helps us build structures that address the root causes of gun violence.  This leads to the healing and empowerment of Black moms, women, and families impacted.

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Need to wait for that direct deposit to hit? Pledge Your PTO Today.

Thank you for helping us empower Black women & families. You'll get a reminder to pledge your PTO soon.

Your donation supports the wellness of Black women and their families.​

Black moms and caretakers are a key to solving the gun violence epidemic we’re experiencing, but their role as community leaders is being ignored. At the FRO, we pour into Black women, because they are the primary caregivers of the population most accused of and most impacted by firearm homicide: Black youth.
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Our FRO Community Center is built on the belief that when Black women -- especially those navigating the impacts of gun violence -- are supported with holistic wellness and economic resources, they become powerful agents of change. 
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Your pledge fuels this vision. It helps transform our FRO Community Center into a daily-access, fully operational hub for our BLOOM Network of over 2,000 Black mothers, single mothers, and women seeking tools to heal themselves and their families.

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Our Impact: Scientifically Proven Wellness Programs

Our impact has been scientifically validated through a research partnership with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions, with a forthcoming study showing increases in participants’ hope, energy, and mood levels after engaging in our BLOOM programs.

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This impact is seen in moms like Ana, a 2023 Cohort graduate who shared, “BLOOM transformed my approach to wellness. I’m actively seeking different modes to heal and become a better mother.”

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BLOOM Cohort participants also leave the program completing a SMART goal. Graduates have been able to fulfill lifelong dreams like submitting a children's book manuscript to a publisher, applying to an artistic representation agency, and creating a media platform. With an 84% graduation rate, alumni have leveraged the Professional and Leadership Development certificates they gain into opportunities like securing new jobs, exploring trades, going back to school, and entrepreneurship — acts that improve their quality of life.

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Why should I pledge my PTO?

Your pledge is a pledge for safe, abundant, and liberated families. 

We are working to restore Black families to the gardens they are destined to be, and we need allies in our fight.
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This repair requires all of us, because gun violence affects all of us. 
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Gun violence is a legacy of enslavement that is still affecting our communities over 160 years after it was outlawed. Due to the legacy of enslavement, Black Americans have been historically denied rest and wellness; Black Americans are less likely to have time and access to leisure.
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Supporting the restoration of Black families is one of the most significant ways to honor Juneteenth, in addition to lifting up the advocacy of Black women. 
 
Most notably, Dr. Opal Lee of Marshall, Texas.

Since 2016, Dr. Opal Lee has marched to have the legacies and liberation of enslaved Black people honored nationwide through the recognition of Juneteenth. Though the Emancipation Proclamation was passed in 1863, it was only implemented with the passage of the 13th Amendment on January 31, 1865, legally freeing enslaved Black people. And even after this passage, in some Southern states, Black people were still in bondage. 

Juneteenth marks the true end of chattel slavery in America, which came with the freedom of over 250,000 enslaved people in Galveston Bay, Texas, on June 19, 1865.
 
And if we really want to get into it—the very celebration of this holiday makes it clear that for Black people in this country, true freedom has always been precarious.
 
What does it mean to be legally free but societally, culturally, and systemically subjected? To be able to buy a home, but be denied a housing loan because of the color of your skin; to be able to access welfare services, but be demoralized for it; to be able to vote, but be intimidated, harmed, and blocked from turning in a ballot; to be told to heal, but be given no resources to do so?

Our violence prevention programs create an infrastructure of care that has long been denied to Black communities and families. 

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Your pledge to donate your paid time off for Juneteenth sows a seed in our mission.

 

This is how we BLOOM. 

Sources: Oprah Daily and National Museum of African American History and Culture

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