GirlTREK's Bold Stand for Joy and Justice

IMPACT 2024

This year, we made some decisions that required remarkable courage for a movement of our size. But we believe the secret sauce to our success is courage. Being unafraid to go big because the risk of not going big is too great. Because Black women are in a fight for our lives and now is not the time for safe bets.

With more than half a million followers and a reach of 17M+, we made a bold move to disconnect from social media and go offline, choosing to connect deeply with women through weekly calls and in-person events. We encouraged women to step away from their screens and the relentless barrage of negative news and anti-Black attacks on social media, and join us on the pavement to heal and build community IRL.

In a year with one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime, we knew this year was going to be tough for our community, so we prepared for the road ahead—going offline, getting into the streets of our neighborhoods, protecting our sacred spaces, reconnecting with each other, doubling down on self-care, and building coalitions with other Black women. We made the deliberate shift to invest more of our resources into fostering real, human connection.

MARCH

HISTORIC MEMBERSHIP MEETING

We kicked off the season with a live broadcast from our national headquarters in Washington DC, and our new southern headquarters at the historic Bricklayers Hall in Montgomery, AL on Tubman Day, March 10, the 110th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s passing. Thousands of Black women from every corner of the country and as far away as Panama, the U.K. and Kenya joined us for our first-ever national membership meeting and recommitted to our new mission. With more than 17K members tuning in, that evening was a powerful demonstration of our movement’s might and a historic refounding moment for GirlTREK.

GROUNDWORK IN ALABAMA

This year, we engaged in vital relationship building in Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham to lay the groundwork for our new Care Village model. We built a coalition of 75 partners that will serve as the foundation for our work in Alabama, and the South more broadly. We also invited GirlTREK members to join us in the annual Selma Jubilee Parade to commemorate the 59th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the historic Selma-to-Montgomery March that led to the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. More than 100 organizers from Georgia, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama walked with the national team through the streets of Selma spreading our message of joy and justice, walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel, and Amelia Boynton.

APRIL

15,577 WALK IN SPRING CHALLENGE

On April 1, we launched one of our most successful challenges to date, Self-Care for Freedom Fighters, a 10-week wellness series designed to help women create healthy new habits and prioritize self-care. We provided weekly self-care assignments focused on spiritual development, physical health, and emotional well-being to help women #GetFree from the things that are making them sick. Every Saturday morning we hosted a weekly walk and talk with Morgan and Vanessa to keep women motivated.

JUNE

"I was able to release 20 pounds, started therapy weekly, and walked everyday not just 5 days. It gave me more clarity, restful sleep and I gained so much peace."

78% WALKING AT LIFE-SAVING LEVELS

Three-fourths of the women who participated in Self-Care for Freedom Fighters walked 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week for four consecutive weeks or more, and an incredible 35% walked ten consecutive weeks. This is where habit formation begins. Women shared stories of transformation, breakthroughs, victories, and manifestations.

BETA APP LAUNCHED

This summer we spent time in beta mode on a tool that we are developing to help power the 10 in 10 strategy. GirlTREK Underground, our first-ever mobile app, was released on Juneteenth, and in just four months, users walked 151,840 collective miles and earned 11,532 badges. The beta version of the app was a critical part of the development of a revolutionary tool that will drive behavior change and organize members for collective action. We were able to gather critical feedback to help us refine the app and create the best possible experience for members when the next iteration is built.

JULY

5 WALKS LED BY BLACK WOMEN MAYORS

We pioneered the first-ever “Walk with the Mayor” initiative, hosting walks with five Black women mayors in Clayton County and Henry County, Georgia. More than 500 women attended these walks and returned each month.

A GIRLTREK MEMBER IN 1 IN 14 U.S. HOUSEHOLDS

GirlTREK is reaching Black women in neighborhoods across the country, and increasingly across the globe. Through walking crews, digital platforms, and national events, we are creating a presence in every space where Black women gather, connect, and lead. GirlTREK’s membership continues to grow, now representing 7% of the total population of Black women in the U.S., which means 1 in 14 Black households has a member of GirlTREK.

AUGUST

ACTIVATED 5 GIRLTREK COLLEGE CREWS ON HBCU CAMPUSES

GirlTREK continues to expand our reach and impact through strategic partnerships that align with our vision and support our mission to save Black women’s lives. In our effort to engage more young women in the movement, we launched GirlTREK College Crew chapters at five HBCU campuses across the country. Each chapter will have access to resources and learning opportunities that promote a healthy lifestyle, including ways to build a daily walking habit, make healthier food choices, and build awareness about mental health.

WALKED IN SOLIDARITY WITH 10 BLACK WOMEN-LED ORGANIZATIONS

We launched The Liberation Line, a revolutionary new tool that we used to strategize for collective action and mobilize our membership. It wasn’t just a weekly call; it was a lifeline for our community and an opportunity for deeper engagement and mobilization. For ten Saturdays, thousands of women gathered on The Liberation Line to walk and talk about the most pressing issues that impact Black women’s lives. Each week we featured special guests like Tarana Burke, founder of the Me Too movement, LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, and Aisha Nyandoro, CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, Black women who are leaders, advocates, and voices of change. We stood in solidarity, deepening our understanding of the issues, building our power, and building coalitions with women in other movements. We organized for justice for victims of police violence, raised awareness about the maternal health crisis, supported survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and amplified the fight for voting rights and political engagement.

SEPTEMBER

We piloted strategies to intensify support and organizing within the justice-impacted community with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, and expanded our work around food justice, the built environment, and faith-based communities.

WALKING FOR FREEDOM

Our National Field Organizer for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women spent this year building relationships with community organizations that work with justice-impacted women, and hosted weekly walks at the Breakthru House of Atlanta, a transitional facility for women re-entering the community. She is also helping us build an advocacy agenda that is inclusive and speaks to the oft forgotten experiences of incarcerated Black women. She spoke in the nation's capital, at the 10th Anniversary FreeHer March and Rally, delivering a moving speech about the impact of incarceration on women’s health.

CHANGING FOOD SYSTEMS

This year we hired the lead designer of Edible Schoolyards to implement a scaled solution for increasing food access in Black communities. She led the growth of the GirlTREK Garden Club which now includes 106 school, community, church and backyard gardens across 31 states.

OCTOBER

$50,000+ RAISED IN SWEAT EQUITY PARTNERSHIP

GirlTREK members walked over 14,000 miles in solidarity with The Allstate Foundation and Ujima, the National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community, raising more than $50K in one week in support of domestic violence survivors. The Intimate Partner Violence Support Guide that we developed in partnership with Ujima has been downloaded 1,247 times and read in 10 countries from Ireland to Indonesia to the Netherlands.

100 CHURCHES ACTIVATED

Over 100 churches were represented in a national call with Cynthia Thompson, GirlTREK’s Vice President of Organizing and made a commitment to introducing GirlTREK activities and principles into their neighborhoods.

UNVEILED NEW MISSION

On October 22, in a room full of leading philanthropists, advocates, and leaders from organizations like the Skoll Foundation and Pivotal Ventures, we unveiled our bold new mission to extend life expectancy for Black women by 10 years over the next decade. The evening featured a powerful keynote conversation between GirlTREK CEO and co-founder T. Morgan Dixon and political leader Stacey Abrams, focusing on the critical need to address the state of Black women’s health. The conversation underscored the role of everyday women in driving systemic change and shaping the future of public health in America.

The following morning, as part of GirlTREK’s rollout of this new vision, Morgan and Vanessa stood on the TEDWomen stage with media mogul Pat Mitchell in a powerful interview that amplified the importance of GirlTREK’s work, marking their third TED Talk.

Read GirlTREK's Bold 5-Year Strategy

1000 ORGANIZERS GATHER IN ATLANTA

On Saturday, October 26, at sunrise, nearly 1,000 of our members gathered for our Joy and Justice Rally. In that room, we witnessed the power of this sisterhood. Women traveled from California and New York and all over the South to be a part of this transformative experience. We conducted a mini teach-in, training women on how to lead a walk in their neighborhoods, and presented our 7-Point Joy and Justice Agenda, energizing women to start organizing in their communities.

NOVEMBER

PILOTED THE BLUE BRIGADE

We piloted the Blue Brigade, a cohort of volunteers trained to visit Black women in our communities to check on their mental well-being and connect them to local mental health resources. Ten women from Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Illinois were taught Mental Health First Aid basics as well as safety and first aid skills as part of this training. They had an opportunity to put these skills into practice in the field, knocking on doors in their neighborhoods to perform wellness checks. The day after Election Day, the Blue Brigade volunteers hosted a virtual session to hold space for women to process their feelings following the results of the presidential election. This pilot cohort will serve as the model for GirlTREK’s Care Crusade in 2025.

36 NATIONAL TRAININGS

Our national coaches conducted 36 training sessions to support women interested in starting a walking crew in their neighborhood, multiplying GirlTREK’s reach as we prepare to mobilize Black women next year in support of our new mission.

2921 VOLUNTEER AND STAFF LED EVENTS

Part of our success is our partnerships with brand-aligned organizations like Peloton, Black sororities like Zeta Phi Beta, and strategic partners like The Allstate Foundation, Ralph Lauren, and the Mississippi Baptist Convention. These partnerships help us to build capacity and expand our reach. For example, organizers in NYC, Washington, D.C., Dallas and Houston hosted a series of Saturday walks from Peloton showrooms, allowing us to tap into a global brand that has a large membership base.

RAISED $5M

In April we celebrated the accomplishments of the 2018 Audacious cohort in Vancouver with our friends at TED, kicking off a major campaign to raise capital to support our long-range 10-year plan. We have raised $5M so far this year and we’re working to secure an additional $45M to reach Mission Accomplished by 2035.

DECEMBER

JOANNA VISSER ADJOIAN: LEADING GIRLTREK’S SYSTEMS CHANGE AGENDA

Starting this December, GirlTREK will proudly welcome Joanna Visser Adjoian as our inaugural Chief Advocacy Officer. Joanna will lead our systems change work with a visionary strategy to build a national coalition of partners dedicated to advancing health justice for Black women. Her leadership will drive the mobilization of a strategic network, secure critical investments, and shape GirlTREK’s bold policy and legislative agenda. With Joanna at the helm, we are poised to address systemic inequities and accelerate our mission to increase Black women’s life expectancy by 10 years in 10 years.

THANK YOU!!

This year we made strategic sacrifices, like stepping away from social media, because we knew the work had to go deeper. In a year when emotions ran high and the weight of the world felt especially heavy, we had each other. We created a space for every Black woman who needed healing and connection, and we got real-time notes from the field every single day testifying to how this work is saving lives.

We are building something transformative, and we thank you for being a part of this journey. We are immensely grateful for your support.