Those findings helped launch the Black Girl Freedom Fund, established in September by eight Black women in philanthropy and activism, including Tarana Burke, who is credited with starting the Me Too movement. Its first campaign is 1Billion4BlackGirls, which calls for $1 billion in contributions earmarked for Black girls over the next decade.
Co-founder Monique Morris, who also leads the philanthropic organization Grantmakers for Girls of Color, says it wants to have the $1 billion in contributions come from across the philanthropic community. The Black Girl Freedom Fund will seek to support legal advocacy and fight against what it calls “structural violence enacted against Black girls.”
As part of this effort, the fund partnered with Shondaland, a television production company, for a December episode of the show “Grey’s Anatomy.” The episode portrayed two Black girls being kidnapped by a human trafficker, reflecting a social problem the fund wanted to address: A report from the U.S. Justice Department that analyzed suspected human trafficking from 2008 to 2010, found that the overwhelming majority of sex trafficking victims were women and 40% were Black.
