LYNN — In today’s society, it can be hard to teach young girls to love themselves. But former Lynner Ivanna Solano continues to take that as a challenge.
The second annual Love Your Magic conference, was put on by Solano and her fellow event coordinators Chaylin Diaz, Esperancia Paul, and Nohely Vargas, over the weekend at the UP Academy School in Dorchester.
The six-hour event provided Panera Bread for breakfast, homemade Latin food for lunch, free books and hair products for the attending girls, a live singing performance, and activities that taught the girls about the importance of advocacy, self-love, and sisterhood.
“I want them to take away from this that their voice matters, they are seen, they are valued, and they have a community that is here to support them and really help them find themselves and path they want to be on,” said Solano.
The conference made its debut last year with 30 girls in attendance. This year the planning for the event started back in September with weekly meetings to ensure an even more successful day. With social media and word of mouth from the Dorchester school and surrounding Boston communities, the Love Your Magic conference doubled their registrations with more than 70 girls aged 8-10 from around the country eager to participate.
“I think today we were able to definitely make a much larger impact and we were able to reach a lot more girls and provide them with a lot more resources from people we see as professionals in the area while also giving them the opportunity to walk away with books and tools they can implement in their everyday lives,” said Solano, who graduated from Lynn Classical in 2010.
Jani Olivo, the event’s host, guided the girls through the long day while keeping them energized and engaged in each activity. The session facilitators included Lovely Hoffman, who talked about self-love, Bernadine Desanges, who provided activities that taught the girls about sisterhood, and Crystal Chandler and Irvienne Goldson, who created workshop curriculums that helped the girls learn about self advocacy.
Niya Norwood performed an original song with lyrics that taught the ethnically diverse group about the importance of “Black girl magic.”
“To me, black girl magic means sisterhood and working together to help your community and help each other out,” said 8-year-old Jaylin Caver from Boston. “Today I learned that sisterhood is a part of life and you don’t have to go through stuff alone.”
The initial purpose behind the Love Your Magic conference was to empower young girls of color to embrace their beauty and culture. With last year’s event being so successful, girls from a variety of different cultures jumped at the chance to be in attendance for the 2018 conference.
“It’s also important to start empowering our young girls who are not of color to really engage in those important conversations and think about what it means to be an ally and how to be active within that,” said Solano. “I think a lot of the girls here today may not identify as black or brown but they are very aware of the things that are affecting our black and brown girls and are standing here in solidarity with them.”
Shanice Manuel, of Lynn, woke up early on Saturday to drive all the way to Dorchester to attend the conference. She is a member of the 2010 graduating class from Lynn Classical where she met Solano, whom she has been friends with ever since.
“I was interested in coming to see young girls being taught to love themselves and respect themselves because that is so important,” said Manuel, a nurse at Mass General in Revere. “I think this is a really nice thing that they’re doing and also just to see somebody that I went to high school with who is running this whole thing is really inspiring.”
With another triumphant conference under their belt, the women of Love Your Magic hope to continue their movement. Solano explained of their aspirations to grow into a non-profit organization that could facilitate an after-school program that could continue to teach young girls how to love themselves, love each other, and be engaged in their communities.
“Society can be really mean sometimes and I don’t think we do enough of teaching our young girls,” said 25-year-old Manuel. “When you’re in school you learn math, you learn social studies, you gain all this book knowledge, but nobody ever teaches you how to love yourself and how to get through this mean world.”