PWIC launches UN sustainable development program in Lower 9th Ward
4th November 2024 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
Powerful Women International Connections (PWIC) members stood with Lower Ninth Ward community leaders and residents in a World Prayer for Global Unity and Peace on October 22. The first Global Prayer event was held outside the Andrew P. Sanchez & Copelin-Byrd Multi-Service Center at 1616 Fats Domino Avenue in New Orleans.
Valeri Bocage, founder and CEO of PWIC and native New Orleanian, organized the World Prayer in the Lower 9th Ward, where she grew up. At the event, Bocage also announced the launch of PWIC’s U.N. sustainable development goals program to uplift the Lower 9th Ward.
Impakter, a London-based global platform, has chosen PWIC as one of the few groups to address the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This recognition underscores the global impact of PWIC’s initiatives, connecting our local efforts to a larger community striving for sustainable development.
While she lives in San Francisco, where she evacuated during Hurricane Katrina, the city and her familial roots beacon Bocage to return home and give back. She and the PWIC will work collectively to make the U.N. goals a reality in the Lower 9.
PWIC’s U.N. goals include Eliminating Poverty, Providing Quality Education for All, Promoting Good Health and Well-Being, Building Sustainable Cities and Communities and Reducing Inequality.
“I dream of rebuilding New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward to honor my grandparents’ legacy,” Bocage said.
Her grandfather was considered “The Godfather” of the area because he and her grandmother helped residents with rent, mortgages, utilities, groceries, getting teens out of jail, and more. Tragically, they were murdered in their own Lower 9th Ward home on Charbonnet Street. The perpetrators were never caught.
Valerie’s father, Edwin Joseph Bocage, known as “Eddie Bo,” was a famous pianist and songwriter. He was raised in Algiers and the 9th Ward. He toured worldwide and wrote songs for others, including Little Richard and Etta James’s “My Dearest Darling,” with fellow pianist and bandleader Paul Gayten.
The Reverend Willie Calhoun, a Lower 9th Ward community leader, voting rights and youth advocate, opened the World Pray event with a communal prayer.
“We’re assembled here to pray for a why. Not a how but a why. Why do we need to pray? Because prayer is needed for everything and everybody. This country is going through some traumatic changes now. We really need to come together and the only way we can come together is through prayers,” Calhoun said. He prayed for the “uplift of our children and leaders” and for wisdom, knowledge, and understanding for those in leadership who need guidance.
Bocage plans to get community leaders, schools, students and staff, parents and businesses involved to make the Lower Ninth Ward a model for other communities.
PWIC’s members come from all walks of life dedicated to the organization’s humanitarian work. They live in California, Florida, North Carolina, New York, Washington and Iowa, throughout Louisiana, and in countries such as London, Paris, New Zealand, Switzerland, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
Despite their various backgrounds and personal commitments, these women have chosen to dedicate their time and resources to PWIC’s global network of humanitarian leaders, showcasing their unwavering commitment to social justice and sustainable development. The organization’s global projects include rebuilding a school and orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya, supporting Ukrainian women and mothers and reducing prison recidivism.
Several community advocates and PWIC members attended the World Prayer event. Dr. Jillandra Carter Rovaris, a psychologist, CEO and founder of iWill ‘til i’mWell, which offers medical and mental health services in San Francisco spoke during World Prayer.
Rovaris returned to New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina to offer mental health services to survivors. She coordinated the “KATRINA Walk,” using Katrina as an acronym for “Keeping All the Resources Alive in New Orleans.” She called on Councilman Thomas to help raise funds that were given to different universities to bring back the counseling center.
“I just had a powerful urge to do something for the people. Because when trauma hits all the coping mechanism you use in your daily life goes away,” she said.
Rovaris, the sister of Congressman Troy Carter, says her focus is “Carrying out God’s mission of care and love for all people.” She has a passion for mental health.
“I am just here encouraging all of us to work to normalize good mental well-being and to fight for our children and make ways for them to talk to people to who are trained to help them process their thoughts,” said Rovaris.
“PWIC is an organization full of positive powerful women who are serving as movers and shakers in the world,” she added.
Gail Glapion, a former educator, school board member, YWCA president and CEO emeritus and PWIC member, also attended the prayer for global peace and unity. She shared her personal connection to PWIC’s work, and highlighted the organization’s crucial role in rebuilding communities and helping forgotten women, children and men.
Councilman Oliver Thomas, who represents the Lower Ninth Ward, where he grew up, thanked Bocage for picking “this sacred place,” the Lower Ninth Ward. He educated those assembled on the history of the area and the families that made it one of the country’s most extensive areas of Black homeowners, with 60 percent owning their homes.
“In 1918, when they put the first shovel to the canal, the city couldn’t grow without that canal and in 1923, they called it the Industrial Canal,” Thomas asserted. It was an area of farmland.
“We lived off nature,” he said, speaking of his mother’s garden. “She grew three, four kinds of peppers, alligator pears, asparagus, squash. We’d go out to her garden and pick whatever she wanted.”
Thomas likened growing up in that community to that of the proverbial African village. It was a time when extended families reared 12 or 15 children, and residents rose up together to fight for their rights.
The councilman spoke of his Aunt Leontine Goins Luke, an early leader of the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans. As a community leader and longtime Ninth Ward Civic and Improvement League president, Luke worked to educate and register African-American voters. He also recalled his great grandfather, the Reverend Burnell H. Goins, who, in 1945, helped establish the Ninth Ward Civic and Improvement League.
“So, when people say they have a problem with women being in charge or say, ‘Oh, wow, women are in charge, I say, ‘They were always in charge. I never knew a time when they weren’t. Every time we wanted something we had to ask mama or big mama,” he said.
Bocage asked Detective Chenika Williams and Detective Katherine Barker of the NOPD’s Fifth District to stand and thanked them for their service. She then introduced Vinessa Hudson-Brown, who flew from Memphis, Tennessee, to attend.
Hudson-Brown is the co-founder and executive director of LIFEline to Success, Inc., and the founding parent and board chair of Libretas of Memphis, the only free Montessori school in a low-income area that supports children on the spectrum, those with learning challenges and those left behind in Memphis.
She told The Louisiana Weekly, “I’m supporting PWIC in their education initiative and reentry work. Now we are in New Orleans to encourage our youth in the Lower Ninth Ward, that they have not been forgotten and that they are brilliant. We are here to support our incarcerated youth. We are here to carry on a legacy of excellence and not allow society to tell us we don’t matter.”
Hudson-Brown and Bocage met with OPP Chief of Corrections Debra Hammons and spoke with 17 incarcerated youths. That same day, Bocage, Glapion and Rovaris visited MLK Jr. High School, met with 25 students, and taught them leadership, civic responsibility, and social skills. “That school is going to be a model for other schools,” Bocage attested.
“When the U.N. called, we didn’t know why we were chosen. So, I called our liaison in Egypt and asked him, ‘How did we get selected?’ He asked wryly, ‘You don’t know?’” Bocage said, chuckling.
PWIC will host its Global Impact Conference in collaboration with the United Nations from November 11-12, 2025. The conference will feature keynote speakers, panel discussions, and workshops on advancing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
This article originally published in the November 4, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
