#reachforyou

Reach For You by Rita Satch

Listen to this. This is NOT Amy Winehouse. Mind = Blown.

I was checking out some artists recently featured on the Roots N All radio show, but I was stopped in my tracks as soon as Reach For You started playing. I was deeply confused as to how and why Amy Winehouse had ended up in my playlist. When I realized the singer was actually independent recording artist Rita Satch, I could not wait to share this amazingness. 

Not soon after sharing the song with my friends on Facebook and Twitter, I received a 'thank you' tweet from Rita where she informed me that she wrote Reach For You for Amy soon after she passed. A very fitting and wonderful tribute indeed!

Rita just recently released – on my birthday, actually – a self-titled EP that includes this song along with four more neo-soul gems. Yes, Amy Winehouse is clearly an influence, but Rita's got her own game. As evidence, I hereby present to you Exhibit A: the freshly released video for another track from the EP, Not Ready For Love.

Finally, if you're wondering if she's had any help from recording engineer magic, I hereby present to you Exhibit B: Rita singing an acoustic version of Go, yet another fine track on the EP.

Research shows that girls and young women need supportive relationships in order to thrive. REACH is designed to do just that! 

This month, July 2012, has been dedicated to bringing the young women who participated in our REACH Curves Fitness Program together and strengthen the bond we builded during those amazing eight weeks. 

One of the most random, but turned out to be really awesome, adventure we had as a group was last weekend's outing to downtown Los Altos, CA. Where the heck is that you ask?  It is a small town in Silicon Valley. Our intention was to get together and do something fun like get dinner and a movie, but when we got to our destination, the entire downtown was closed off to set up a wine and art festival the following day! The streets were practically empty and everything was closed except for a few cafes.

Many people would have called it quits and gone home. But not us! We saw this as an opportunity for a ton of fun to happen. We took out our cameras and owned the streets!  We turned these empty streets into our stage, and had a mini photo shoot capturing a lovely summer evening. 

After exploring this empty downtown, we found a nail salon open. The coolest thing about it was that we had the salon to ourselves. It felt like we had a V.I.P. nail art party without expecting it! All the girls got to choose thier nail polish color and got manicures. We didn't have that dinner and movie experience that we wanted due to things that were out of our control, but we ended up having a better time because of it. Getting manicures done gave us a better opportunity to catch up, bond, and learn more about the girls.

Part of mentoring a specific cohort like this one, is consistency and communication. At REACH we strive to nurture relationships that we build with our students and mentors through consistency and communication. After this outing, we found that the girls were more comfortable interacting with all of the group members. When we first meet some of the ladies, a few of them were very shy. When we meet again, those girls were more talkative and engaged. We are proud to see that there have been improvement in the girls self esteem and social interactions. Girl Power!

Ohh yaay! A collab with my hunny Tixa [xMiharuux @yt /reachforyou @ tumblr]