Events

Yolonda Coles Jones, native and resident of Albemarle County, is the founder of The RESTORE Project and Empowered People Coaching & Consulting, devoted to fostering healing, connection, and empowerment. Through The RESTORE Project, Yolonda provides mindfulness-based programming to Black residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia, regardless of age or gender, promoting emotional resilience and community well-being. With Empowered People, Yolonda partners with high-impact, visionary leaders to help them unapologetically embrace their authentic selves, prioritize self-care, and cultivate thriving, supportive spaces in their homes, workplaces, and communities. She has also been a home-based educating mother to 4 (at times 5) children for the past 17 years.

Birth Sisters of Charlottesville is a women of color community-based doula collective supporting women of color through their birth journey and into motherhood. Its aim is to amplify the resiliency of Black, Indigenous, Women of Color by drawing on life experiences, shared values, training, and sacred legacies to provide culturally rooted, trauma-intuitive perinatal services and advocacy.  Birth Sisters serve women in the City of Charlottesville and the surrounding counties.

Lisa Brown (she/her) is a dedicated birth worker, community advocate, and lifelong learner. As the Co-Founder and Deputy Executive Director of Birth Sisters of Charlottesville, a Black woman-led community-based doula organization, she has spent the past six years providing perinatal support to women and birthing people in the Charlottesville area. Her passion for community service runs deep, influenced by her family’s legacy of collective action and her belief in the power of community to create transformative change. Lisa’s approach to birth work centers on building trust, honoring traditions, and holding space for informed decision-making and self-empowerment. She is committed to improving maternal and reproductive health outcomes, fostering safe family support systems, and uplifting the sacred transitions of matrescence and parenthood. 

Doreen Bonnet is Executive Director, Co-Founder, and doula with Birth Sisters of Charlottesville doula collective, an organization dedicated to dismantling root causes of systemic maternal health disparities for Black, Indigenous and People of Color. She has been providing perinatal support to women in the Charlottesville area for the last nine years. She is a certified Matrona Holistic Birth Doula, craniosacral therapist, a Pre and Perinatal Practitioner, a DONA birth doula, Birth in Color full spectrum doula, and a Sisters in Loss postpartum doula. She has a BA in Communications/Public Relations from University of Louisiana at Lafayette and is a graduate of the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts. It is my goal to support mothers in having births with the best possible outcomes for themselves and their babies. I honor the strength of a woman’s inherent capacity to bring forth life…in the way she chooses.

Join us for an engaging conversation co-hosted by UVA Library and Live Arts, designed specifically for community members. This session will highlight the wide array of resources and services the UVA Library offers to the local community Discover how these tools can enhance their operational effectiveness, fundraising strategies, and program development. This event is an excellent opportunity for anyone to explore collaborative possibilities, and learn how to leverage UVA Library for their personal and professional needs.

“I began “De-circulated” in 2021 as I learned that many books were being banned in US schools. When I was growing up in a small town in rural Virginia, books were my lifeline. They introduced me to other cultures, different political viewpoints, and notions of freedom and justice. Books expanded my knowledge of the world and enhanced my compassion toward those who experience the world differently. It is distressing that the alternate viewpoints which allowed me to develop an inquiring and critical mind are being repressed for our youth today.

By making multiple exposure images of banned book covers, I have rearranged the images and obliterated or made text illegible, just as restrictions on the written word ultimately curbs freedom of thought.” – Karen Pape

Grace Little is a multimedia artist living and working in Charlottesville, Virginia. Currently, she is a resident artist at McGuffey Art Center, where she was a recent resident of the Incubator Program (2023-’24). Currently, she is a graduate fellow at the Maker Institute of Studio Art & Theology based in Richmond, Virginia. Grace is a recent graduate from James Madison University, where she received her BFA in Studio Art, and was awarded the Painting and Drawing Achievement Award for the Class of 2023. Grace has been in several shows, publications, and residencies including an upcoming residency through OneCollab in Herrnhut, Germany.