I am co-founder and CFO of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization Bold Lips for Sickle Cell. We are dedicated to awareness, advocacy, and empowerment. We started as a social media awareness challenge back in 2014, we went viral. T-Boz was actually our first celebrity supporter. We had Jordin Sparks, we had Chrisette Michele. We had all these people who were participating in the hashtag and participating in the challenge, and so that momentum just propelled us into becoming a full-fledged organization and being able to do bigger and better things for the sickle cell community.
Our motto is “Be Bold and Speak Up About Sickle Cell Disease,” because we’ve been suffering in silence for so long. We want our advocates to be bold and live a bold, fulfilling life and not allow sickle cell to stop them from doing anything that they want to do in life, whether that be travel, whether that be have children, have a family, whether that be go to school. Whatever you want to do, you can be able to do that and not let sickle cell hold you back from doing anything.
When we first started, it was a little bit challenging because some people didn’t really understand the challenge, they didn’t really want to support the challenge. But we pushed through, and we gained a lot more supporters than we did negative haters and people that weren’t for it. We were able to bring the community together in a better way. We use the hashtag BoldLipsForSickleCell, but we also are a nonprofit organization that does programs and initiatives. We’re actually doing our HBCU college tour right now, to where we are dedicated to spreading sickle cell awareness about sickle cell trait, so trait education, getting college students involved in sickle cell awareness advocacy, and it empowered the Sickle Cell Warriors that are on the campus as well. So, yeah man.
Me and my business partner/CEO, Shamonica Wiggins, she was the one who had the brilliant idea for Bold Lips for Sickle Cell. I was just the one who was like, “Let’s do it, let’s go for it and spread it out on social media. Let’s get this thing going.” So we tag-teamed together.
You’ve got to live your life to the fullest, and the way that you do it, is not the way somebody else is going to do it, and that’s okay.”
-Jew-El, SCD Hgb SS