Raising Agents for Change

Calling Dr Janice Johnson Dias an academic is a little like calling the ocean ‘large’. Yes, she has eye-poppingly impressive qualifications and is an eminent sociologist, but meet or speak to her and you’ll be bowled over by her vibrancy, enthusiasm, energy and joy; she’s big on joy.

Dr. Janice came to wider public attention when, at the age of ten, her daughter, Marley, noticed that the main protagonist in most stories was “a white boy and his dog”. Rather than merely rolling her eyes, or perhaps having a conversation with her mum, she launched the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign to collect 1000 books with black girls as a central character for schools. Within a few months she had gathered 9000 books and the campaign went into the stratosphere, making Marley an international sensation. Now she’s sixteen, still a student, but also a writer and activist.

Marley’s verve, determination, and confidence did not emerge from a vacuum, however. She was part of her mother’s GrassROOTS Community Foundation programme, which takes girls from all backgrounds, and trains them to be agents for change, by using their frustrations to solve social issues. Janice started the programme as a response to Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative. “I liked Michelle Obama, and I liked this message around childhood obesity, but I thought it also had a lot of shortcomings. Michelle was framing childhood obesity as an individual issue, but I took a scholarly eye to the campaign and it was clear that this was really a girl issue, this was really a poverty issue and a structural issue. So I couldn’t rock too far with her down that road. I got some money from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and set up GrassROOTS. It’s one thing to tell people something, but another to train people so they can be their own agents of change.”

One of the ways in which the Foundation gives girls agency is by encouraging them to teach and read to even smaller children, and through that, develop related skills. Janice says, “Competency is such a huge part of the way I think about liberation; when young people or even adults feel super-competent about something, then they feel like they can do their part.” And they certainly do that. A central plank of the program is empowering the ‘Super Girls’ to take on and realise a project of their own. Janice tells me about a ‘somewhat self-absorbed’ financially-privileged student on the scheme who was astonished to find out that not all kids got what they wanted for Christmas, and so initiated a project to raise money to give 100 Haitian orphans whatever they wished for, whether that was a cow or a computer. That project has now grown in scope, with fundraising to decontaminate the local water supply, and to end period poverty in the local area.

Janice’s book, Parent Like It Matters, is grounded in her achievements but soars warmly into inspiration. Written with the encouragement of her dynamic daughter, it not only features relevant stories from Janice’s life but also practical, concrete exercises to take part in as a family, to build resilience and confidence with a hands-on approach to life.

Janice is keen on volunteering, “Volunteerism is a kind of gratefulness and gratitude and action. All of us, by virtue of having this breath that is life, have something to be grateful for. It’s fundamentally important that if we want a peaceful and just world, that we not hoard those things, because the structural dynamic of living in a capitalistic, racist, homophobic, sexist society, is that there are many areas of scarcity and deprivation. But we can transform society from scarcity to abundance through volunteerism. Sustained volunteerism informs us about how structural inequities are making their way into actual people’s lives. It’s hard to do that if you only go to a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, or grab up a toy on Christmas. If people do it, they’ll start to ask questions about how can they do something about structural conditions.

Another tenet of Janice’s parenting ethos is the importance of reading. “I was a good student of the Bible – so the fact that I live as a heathen is somewhat upsetting. The bible has drama! It has action and sci-fi! That was instilled in me, along with the Anansi stories from my mother, and the church’s emphasis on public speaking. A solitary engagement with a text allows you to escape and develop yourself, and words give you the ability to describe experiences, feelings, emotions and context; I wanted my daughter to speak and read early so that she could articulate what was happening to her. But reading’s also a central pathway to liberation. In the Black experience in the United States, it now makes even clearer sense to me why oppressors did not want the enslaved to read; because it frees you in a way that no one can really appropriately explain. We need to read not just to know or regurgitate, but to ask and to query and to drive our imaginations and to move ourselves forward. Reading is the foundation of liberty. It also allows us to be able to learn from what has occurred before and ask questions about what is possible.”

Wonderfully, Janice’s book also emphasises the importance of finding “your innermost and most gleeful self” as a parent. She grins, “Joy. Joy is the starting point. Whatever is happening on the outside, it’s vital that you have this sacred space, this reservoir of optimism. And especially if you’re a woman in the United States, or in any of these developed countries and a person of colour, you’re gonna have to have a sacred space. It’s what’s going to allow you to be able to do the parenting, the emotional labour, the negotiation. Just because society has diminished me, I don’t have to diminish me. Joy allows me to be able to make fun of things when they get heavy, it allows me to be able to be optimistic. And it’s also inspires me to want to do something, to make change. This thing I’m going to try? Something rich might come out of it!”

READ Dr Janice’s book, Parent Like It Matters: How to raise joyful, change-making girls is out now. Find out more at thedrjanice.com