About CABWC

Courageous Access has been around doing this work for Black women since the Summer of 2020 in that shared work room in downtown Des Moines. Wow...that's when we had our first time gathering Black women, providing a safe space, understanding ourselves better, understanding health and harm better, learning how to make choices, learning how to set boundaries, and 5 years later those same women and many more like them have an 80% success rate of avoiding future predatory relationships/circumstances. We did it together, we did with our culture, art, music, heritage, and the realness and safety that comes from us as Black women. We even learned how to connect to Black women therapists through these years and learned that there were a whole GOB of Black women therapists in Iowa and throughout the United States!

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Speaking of the United States, in this 5 year span we have served Black women in more places than Iowa where we're based, but also in Missouri, Texas, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Alabama, Puerto Rico. 

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Every year in Iowa we met in June and October - to celebrate our wins in June and learn about new ways to find safety, healing, and empowerment in October - and to do it together. 

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We learned how to physically take care of ourselves through Personal Security in 6 weeks! Those who participated - Black women and their youth - learned how some serious self defense with nothing but our bodies! 

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The last 2  years before we went national, we had 4 Youth Healthy Relationship cohorts for 8 weeks each! Our youth ate good, and learned even better! They learned how to recognize violence and health in relationships, how to set boundaries, how to love and celebrate their uniqueness, and how to celebrate one another! 

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We even received a grant to start takin' Sistas to healing events in the area and buy out the whole room so we felt safe to explore subjects like the way Black women continue to hold so much trauma and the way it's shortening our lives. Right there in that room with a play featuring Black women from our very own neighborhoods, we dissected all the ways we can start moving...differently. 

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We provided meals and clothes. We provided HIV and STI testing sites. We've provided hundreds of hours of safety planning and life skills mentoring for Sistas. We've collected donations to make sure they moved out of danger of domestic violence, got school clothes for their kids. moved out of their cars after homelessness, paid car notes and car insurance, helped them furnish their homes after violence, helped them find services in their new homes, paid for movers, and helped them celebrate national holidays when financial abuse left them strapped for cash. 

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Now, here we are...

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Bringing healing national. Not for a few hours for Black women in Iowa, but all day for Black women all over the United States!!!

 

Introducing our first, national Courageous Access Black Women's Conference (CABWC)!!! One whole day - no breakouts - 'cause we don't want you to miss a THANG! One whole day of empowerment, healing, laughter, joy, shedding negativity, and spending time in a space curated just for you as a Black woman.

 

No code switching. No dress code. No having to do anything except be there. Get your ticket. Get babysitters, animal sitters, and everything else you need so you can have this time to yourself. Be there, Beautiful; and get emotionally, intellectually FED.

 

Breakfast and lunch together. Culture together. Heritage together. Sistas together. In our space. ALL DAY.

 

Don't miss it.