The extraordinary Sara-Lou Morgan-Walker

AS a young woman fresh out of university and working at her mother’s school, Sara-Lou Angelique Morgan-Walker found her purpose. The young ladies at the school, drawn to her engaging personality, would come to her for help, advice and counselling, and soon she started a group — intent on creating “angelic ladies” with the help of role models from corporate Jamaica.

“I found that because of my personality they found me approachable,” the affable Morgan-Walker shared with All Woman. “Lots of girls would come to me to share their problems — that’s how it started. At the time I was working at the school and was focusing on the girls I had in my presence. I realised that even if I was not able to provide the help that all of them needed, I could start something that could facilitate that help — and facilitate them getting access to the help.”

The Angelic Ladies Society, she admits, was modelled off the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, and Girls Inc, Washington, which impacted the look and feel of the organisation. She learnt very early that corporate companies and manufacturing and distribution companies were very quick to give products towards the cause, and that was how she was able to maintain the early programme. It has today morphed into a fully registered, women-led, non-profit that has been in existence formally for some 10 years, working with vulnerable, high-risk girls in care facilities between 12 and 18, although in more recent times they have been interacting with young ladies as young as nine, and as old as 25.

There is a core group of four, but with interns, volunteers, other resource persons and a network of other women, “We’ve been doing a lot of work on the ground in various areas in our niche”.

“Our primary focus is girls in State facilities — foster homes, orphanages and juvenile facilities,” the founder and executive director said. “We provide holistic care, in essence, life skills training sessions for girls, using our connection with empowering women.”

These interactions involve conversations on puberty, grooming, career choices, self-esteem… trying to help the young ladies access and actualise their best lives.

“We couple these sessions with empowerment talks from women who can share how they’ve been able to overcome… and use that motivation as a way of inspiring the girls to not look at their present circumstances, but to look at the possibilities that exist, so that they can turn their lives around,” she explained.

Though the pandemic, like for everyone else, put a damper on their activities, the team spent the time doing a lot of internal restructuring, focusing on capacity building, and ended last year fruitfully, as beneficiaries of New Wave Jamaica’s Celebrity Closet charity thrifting event, which granted them all the proceeds towards their programmes.

Morgan-Walker’s call to service wasn’t by chance; when she tells her story, including how she, an unmarried woman, ended up with a double-barrelled surname, it’s easy to understand why her path to service was destined.

Just after giving birth, Morgan-Walker’s biological mother stood outside the gates of Victoria Jubilee waiting for an angel to pass, and with the story of wanting to use the restroom, handed the two-day-old baby to the young educator who would later adopt her, and disappeared.

Sexually assaulted in her final year of high school by a close friend’s family member, and struggling with diffidence, Morgan-Walker uses her own story of transformation to help girls possibly navigating similar circumstances.

Formally adopted at age 10, Morgan-Walker relates how difficult her early years were, navigating school as a child and wrestling with all these emotions.

Named for the judge who presided over her preliminary case (Justice Morgan), the young girl spent her entire early school years with that name while being fostered, and at 10 years old, when her adoption was formalised, she added her new family’s surname.

“I was asked whether I’d like to keep both names, and I said yes, because I thought there was some sentimental attachment to Morgan,” she shared. “I do not know any of my biological parents. In high school I would have experienced what it felt like to be isolated, I would also have experienced the financial downside of not being able to afford basic things, how that excluded you from various circles, and how it impacted your self-esteem and self-worth, how it impacted your navigating friendships, and how it stalled you from believing you could achieve the most minimal things, even high grades,” she related.

“That was how I spent most of my early high school life. It was really hard and I thought [for other girls] being an orphan, being abandoned, being neglected, being abused, combined with the fact that you are in a State care facility, that just further compounds how hard it is just to navigate in general, and so my focus is just to share my own experiences and connect them with persons who can pour into their lives.”

She said having being encouraged by people who helped her along her own journey, she was empowered to improve her concept of herself and her self-worth, and was encouraged to pay it forward.

“Connecting [the young ladies] with people they could [relate] to, I felt that making that connection for them could inspire them to live their best lives,” she said.

“[The people who were there for me] really helped to change my mindset. Now I have a better relationship with myself, a better concept of myself.”

Disappointments have been a part of her experience too, but Morgan-Walker said faith has seen her through.

“I’ve had high disappointments and those have set me back and in those moments it’s my relationship with God that helps, and the persons in my circle that provide a countering rhetoric in my ear or in my mind that helps me to navigate out of those moments,” she explained.

But she can also list her proudest achievements — including recently registering the business, as well as the 2019 hosting of the ‘I Can Sprout Wings’ empowerment breakfast, hosted for some 100 girls in State care, in partnership with the Office of the Children’s Advocate, while creating a space for mentors to share with them. She hopes to replicate the event next year.

Nowadays, Morgan-Walker has a 9-5, but she says her work with Angelic Ladies remains the most consistent and permanent thing in her life.

“It has come to be an anchor that has helped me in terms of purpose,” she said.

With a degree in political science and criminology from The University of the West Indies, she’s now looking to do her master’s, hopefully as a Chevening Scholar next year.

She’s also hopeful, in the near future, to run her own girls’ home, and if not, “at least an Angelic Ladies Society hub that would aid in the transitional care of girls from State care facilities to the working world, providing them with the resources they need to help them properly transition”.

This is an area Morgan-Walker is keen to see change in, as she believes not enough is being done to help girls transition.

This year, the society will also be hosting a second annual summer camp at Granville Childcare Facility, where they have partnered to assist in programme development, as they seek to explore, among other things, the creative arts to aid in the overall holistic development of the girls. There’s also the hope to expand the idea of dance therapy sessions, done for the first time last year, which have helped participants express through the arts what they are not able to verbalise.

“I would like to be a voice for women who are experiencing any of my lived experiences. Whether you have been left by your parents, are in high school and on the lowest end of the social and economic strata, or whether you have been abused, I would like to be the encouragement to say that there is healing in the process,” Morgan-Walker assured.