URGENT: Help a 15-Year-Old Black Girl Reclaim Her Roots

Your support can rewrite history — one step, one story, one girl at a time.

Hi, my name is Aniya Joy Hackett. I’m 15 years old — a student, entrepreneur, and proud young Black girl learning to embrace her strength, her beauty, and her truth. I’ve been given the chance to travel to Ghana, West Africa — the land of my ancestors — and I need your help.

My goal is to raise $5,500 by July 8th, 2025, and this dream simply won’t be possible without support from people who believe in legacy, healing, and the power of young Black girls rising.

This is not just a trip. This is a reclamation.

I want to walk through the doors of no return, visit the slave dungeons at Cape Coast and Elmina, and feel what it means to stand on the same soil my ancestors were stolen from. I want to honor their pain, carry their strength, and return home not just informed — but transformed.

This journey will take me to the W.E.B. Du Bois Center, Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, traditional Ghanaian drumming lessons, dance, schools, markets, and more. I’ll build relationships, learn history through experience, and connect with communities that reflect the deepest parts of who I am.

I’m homeschooled, I love serving my family and community, and I’m working hard through my business to contribute — but as a 15-year-old, I don’t have the resources to make this happen on my own. That’s why I’m reaching out to you, my village, for help.

So here’s my ask:

If you believe in Black futures, in Black girls discovering who they really are, in the beauty of reconnecting with a culture that was never lost — just buried — I’m asking you to invest in this moment.

This experience will shape how I lead, how I love, how I build, and how I serve others. I will return home with more than memories — I’ll come back with a mission.

Here’s where your support will go:

✈️ Airfare and travel expenses

Passport and visa fees

Lodging and meals

️ Historic site entries, museums, and cultural tours

Drumming, dance, and connection with Ghanaian schools and communities

Whether it’s $5 or $500, every single dollar brings me closer. And if you can’t donate, please share this with your friends, your family, your socials. Spread the word. Speak my name. Help me get to Ghana.

Let’s show the world that young Black girls deserve to know where they come from — and deserve to bloom because of it.

With strength, gratitude, and love,

Aniya Joy