Columbia, SC

MEDIA ADVISORY — Columbia, SC
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Candice M. Dixon, Communications Manager
Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium
candice@southernblackgirls.org | (334) 394-3236

Joy & Justice Tour Coming To Columbia, SC with Free Festival Celebrating Black Girls and Women

Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium brings its nine-city Southern tour to the Midlands on Saturday, September 26

Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium’s Joy & Justice Tour touches down in Columbia, South Carolina on Saturday, September 26, with a free, family-friendly festival-style community event at the Earlewood Park Community Center. Expect music, food trucks, and a day built for fun, alongside community resources, and a photo booth experience sponsored by Dove. Each stop also features nine activation zones designed to uplift, inform, and celebrate Black girls and women in their fullness: Arts & Culture, Beauty, Economic Empowerment, Health & Wellness, STEM, Advocacy & Justice, Sports, Nutrition, and Education & HBCU. This is where joy and justice live together, because joy is strategy. You belong here!

Saturday, September 26, 2026
11:00 a.m. – Joy & Justice Tour Columbia
Earlewood Park Community Center, 1113 Recreation Dr, Columbia, SC 29203

Our why is simple: Black women and girls in the South are facing converging crises, from gender-based violence and a Black maternal health emergency to the erosion of health care access and the systemic underfunding of Black women-led organizations. Less than 1% of the South’s $4.8 billion in philanthropic investments reaches Black women and girls. The Joy & Justice Tour is the response: resources, community, and the refusal to be defined by what Black women and girls are surviving. As Executive Director Chanceé Lundy has said, joy is not a luxury; it is strategy, and right now, it is how we protect each other. Joy without justice is temporary. Justice without joy is unsustainable. Charlotte carries that declaration across the finish line, in a region where Black girls and women are building businesses, leading congregations, and shaping civic life while remaining the least funded population in Southern philanthropy.

Since 2017, Southern Black Girls has awarded more than $11.4 million to over 250 organizations and provided more than $600,000 in micro-grants to 1,000+ recipients through its #BlackGirlJoyChallenge. Some of our recent, local grantee partners include:

  • EveryBlackGirl, Inc. (Columbia), grassroots advocacy, leadership programming, and crisis response working to end the push-out and criminalization of Black girls in schools
  • Scrub Life Cares (Columbia), expanding access to menstrual health resources and reproductive health education in Title I schools
  • The reLeaf Collective (Columbia and Lexington), a 31-acre woodland retreat and agribusiness incubator connecting community, land, and wellness
  • The Joyous Womb (Saint Helena Island), reproductive and birth support rooted in Gullah Geechee and Indigenous practices

Register for Columbia – www.southernblackgirls.org/joytour/columbia.html
Learn more about the Joy & Justice Tour – www.southernblackgirls.org/joytour/

For general tour inquiries: joytour@southernblackgirls.org

ABOUT SOUTHERN BLACK GIRLS AND WOMEN’S CONSORTIUM
Founded in 2017 by LaTosha Brown, Felecia Lucky, Alice Eason Jenkins, and Margo Miller, Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium channels philanthropic resources to Black girls, women, and femme identifying communities across 13 Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Learn more at southernblackgirls.org.

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