What is White Girl Awakening?
We cannot imagine a world worth living in without more of what we call Awakening; A posture of “welcome”. A curiosity of what more togetherness can usher into our broken world. A bravery to allow people to be where they are, who they are and to meet them there, enter in and stay a while.
White Girl Awakening is a community committed to curiosity, a posture of welcome, and a life of awakening to ourselves, God, and others. In this space we yield to learning and hearing from those who can teach us and more importantly lead us into a greater understanding of their lives, experiences and history.
Meet Our Team
JEN BARNES
Founder
Jen Barnes is a social entrepreneur, minister, and advisor with a passion for whole community development and healing. She has worked with organizations such as The King Center, One Billion Rising and Heifer International to bring education, awareness and collective strategy around solving various social and economic challenges. Jennifer’s work has been recognized by Forbes Women and she was the recipient of The King Center’s Dream Forward Award. She’s here to share her journey of Awakening in hopes that it will inspire others to yearn for wholeness in God’s body to join in the journey.
Vonnetta West
Content Contributor
Eradicating Racism Consultant
Civil & Human Rights Expert
Vonnetta L. West is the founder and CEO of Go West Consulting LLC, which facilitates experiences and produces content, such as social media, podcasts, and websites purposed to connect and transform people for good. Vonnetta provides trainings on Eradicating Racism, The Bias Challenge, Leadership That Grows, Salvation vs. Community, and other sessions aimed at building and sustaining community, including in professional spaces. She is the pastor of Our Neighbor's House, and Senior Nonviolence Instructor for The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center). Vonnetta is also a leader with The National Center for Civil and Human Rights’ Interfaith Response to White Supremacy. She is an educator who helped found a computer and professionalism school in Liberia, West Africa, where she resided for two years. Under her leadership, Our Neighbor’s House is building an Educational Center in Liberia, West Africa.
LAUREN SELLERS
Operations Director
Lauren is a words enthusiast from South Georgia. She is an editor at Orange, a Christian nonprofit that creates resources for churches. She has worked in student ministry and whole community development in both Houston, Texas and rural communities in Georgia.
Lauren has spent the last few years on her own journey of Awakening and is excited to continue that journey with this community.
KAYLA FUNK
Content Director
Kayla Funk is the Founder and Creative Director of Open Hands Overflowing Hearts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding childhood cancer research. Through her own journey with cancer and advocacy work, her faith has been challenged, and she has developed a relentless passion for compassion. Today Kayla believes her work in the world is to be a listening ear and a soft place to land for others who need an extra dose of love, support, and grace in their lives.
What We Do
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Community: Our desire is to create a safe space to relieve the loneliness and fears that a journey of awakening brings by connecting you with like-minded women who are on the journey to being curious, welcoming unknowing and pressing into the hard things both past and present that will take us to a better future, together.
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Resources: We are determined to create and point our community to tangible resources that will not only help with truthfully knowing yourself and others, but also help make a more complete world that celebrates experience and difference. Our resources will have biblical foundation that equip us all to bring light and life to humanity through healing and a lifestyle of awakening.
A Letter from our Founder Jennifer Barnes: My Awakening
The segregated Sunday hour would become the greatest inner conflict within my faith journey during the most formative years and because of it I would silently question everything else about the faith I’d been handed, the version of church I’d inherited and the Great Commission that has echoed from God’s heart since before the foundations of this earth were laid. The foundations where we have wreaked havoc since that day mankind chose to know the things they did not need to know about good and evil. From the same blood of Adam and Eve our hearts all beat and long for restoration and oneness, wholeness again. Of this, I am convinced.