2005: WHEN WOMEN GATHER

Tyletha Samuels, the shelter organizer created a women’s group at PTH called When Women Gather. The group met monthly, and the first meeting was on December 12th, 2005. The meetings were a safe space for women to brainstorm and were a resource for every campaign in that ideas and issues surfaced there during a period when there were few women members who were regularly attending meetings and became a powerful organizing space. The first meeting’s agenda Included the following questions for participants to discuss:

 What kind of working group will this be?

 Identify what it is the organization is working on, and how can we build on that?

Tyletha Samuels: It was a lot of men there. But women was going through a lot! Women was the mothers. I mean, women had children and I was part of the shelter system and most of the shelters that I was going to, it wasn’t men’s shelters, it was family shelters and in family shelters, women were the head of the household.

When Women Gather , it was strong. I wanted women to know that they are strong, and that you could make a difference and it was awesome. I liked my When Women Gather meetings. I mean, women felt powerful. I wanted women to know that when you gather and there’s strength in numbers that you candosomething. And just being a mom, and going through all of that, that in itself alone… If your problem don’t get solved tomorrow just you waking up and still going through it and being strong enough to still handle it… That’spower.