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***FULLY FOCUSED ENCOURAGES & INFORMS***

Hey to all fans who are FULLY FOCUSED.... We are asking for just a minute of your time to view something serious and powerful!!! Our Public Service Announcement.  Young women,-we want to convey that if we think ENOUGH of ourselves, and carry our  read more >>

Community Service Project Summary:

To uphold the reputation of being an all girl hip hop group which prides itself on not needing guys in our dance group to "do the hard stuff," i.e. stunts, etc. We are the girls who get the job done. Difficult takes a day -impossible a week. Gettin read more >>

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Mission:

To uphold the reputation of being an all girl hip hop group which prides itself on not needing guys in our dance group to "do the hard stuff," i.e. stunts, etc. We are the girls who get the job done. Difficult takes a day -impossible a week. Getting the job done isn't only the way we live our dance lives but it's our WAY of life. When competitions, performances, or even community service tasks are put before us, we are FULLY FOCUSED on getting the job done!!! I'M FOCUSED MANNNN!!!!!!!!

Beacon Center:

SCO Family of Services - Brooklyn

Captain:

Nekia Wise

Co-Captain:

Tianna Brown

Cause:

Violence

Type of Event:

Poetry Presentation / Hip Hop Dance Class

Location:

SCO Family Services Beacon, JHS 35 / Cap 21 Studios, New York, NY

Day(s) and Date(s):

Tuesday May 19, 2009 Saturday May 23, 2009

Time(s):

Tuesday May 19, 2009 7:30pm Saturday May 23, 2009 3:30-5:00

Organization/Cause Receiving Service:

The basketball team of the Beacon Program Girls from the Beacon program and NYC Public Junior and High Schools.

Number of overall participants: (team members, volunteers, etc.):

Fully Focused Dancers -11 Basketball Team/Coaches-17 Teenage girls from the Beacon/NYC Junior/high schools-22

Goal(s):

To facilitate the awareness of domestic violence amongst young men and young women through areas of high interest -basketball and dance. Also, to push self-esteem and confidence building through dance, and real-life authentic discussion.

Overview and Accomplishments:

Prior to describing our community service project, we think that it's important to inform our readers of why we stand behind violence as our cause, with a specific lens on domestic violence. Prior to December 2008, we had 14 members in our group. Since December, we've lost two members of our group to teenage pregnancy. One of these girls would always come to rehearsal and share with us stories about how she "went upside his head." We were always her attentive audience, delighting in hearing these stories. We found them funny and never felt a sense of urgency or seriousness in what she was saying because she never seemed defeated. Each year, we hold our annual recital in December. This past recital, she didn't show up. We later found out that she'd started to stay away because she was pregnant by this same guy. In March of 2009, we learned of our other member's pregnancy. This member is pregnant by a guy who we witnessed get physically aggressive with her at one of our performances. In March, she came to a rehearsal and asked for our attention while she read a letter. Part of it read "I am taking a leave of absence to become a mom. I'm not asking you to be happy for me, just respect me." Needless to say, teenage pregnancy has hit home in our group, but we didn't want to take on teenage pregnancy a our cause because we think our cause is deeply rooted in the domestic violence issue, in conjunction with self-esteem. These young women think that the babies will make everything "okay." Shortly after loosing our second member, in April we learned of the Step it Up competition. It was definitely a vehicle for us to commit to, and try to empower ourselves as well as others. Heartfelt conversations about what hit close to home really put us all on the same page with the same motivation to take on domestic violence as our cause. The first thing we did was a poetry presentation/open discussion at our Beacon with one of the teenage basketball teams of young men. We began by reading a poem titled: I Got Flowers Today by Paulette Kelly which is a popular domestic violence poem. The girls broke the poem into stanzas, each reading one to the guys and coaches. Following the reading of the poem, we had one of our members, Takeia share a real-life domestic violence situation that just hit her family. Her first cousin was recently incarcerated for KILLING her husband when she snapped after years of abuse. After Takeia shared, we opened the discussion to the basketball team. We were really impressed by how we were able to get these 'hardcore' guys to share out their feelings about domestic violence. Their coach had a lot to say too. At the end of this session, we handed out the poem we'd read. We made it into bookmarks and encouraged the guys to give one to their female friend, sister, mother, girlfriend, or any other female that they thought it would be helpful to. You can see parts of this presentation in one of our videos on our page. The next part of our community project was geared toward young women. We invited girls from our beacon, -as well as the dancers each bringing a friend or two from their school to a dance class in Manhattan. We rented Cap 21 Studios and advertised the class as a day to learn some of Fully Focused's signature choreography as well as a time to feel good about the female you are. We really wanted to put the self-esteem component in effect with this project. We taught two combinations to two songs about domestic violence: Love is Blind by Eve and No More Drama by Mary J. Blige. At the end of dance class, we sat in a circle and had the girls rank themselves according to how they felt they danced in class on a scale of 1-10. Then we discussed the issues addressed in these songs and shared out one way that we felt confident about ourselves and linked that as a mechanism for HOW and WHY we could never fall victim to domestic violence. In this dance class, we think that we facilitated positive feelings about oneself and we feel strongly that self-esteem is an initial and major cause of females conceding to domestic violence. If we can serve as the role models for feeling good about who you are and the success of what you are capable of doing (dance in our case), then we think that we can infiltrate a sense of confidence among young women who will not stand for abuse. Finally, we are trying to make some sort of partnership, or execute some community service that uses dance as a kinesthetic way of standing against domestic violence with Safe Horizon affiliated centers. We are in conversations, however this is a work in progress!!!MINIMIZE