A local Richmond Hill-based nonprofit is hosting a health and wellness event in South Ozone Park on Saturday, Aug. 17.
The South Queens Women’s March will host its inaugural Health and Wellness Fair at The Figure Studio, located at 111-49 Lefferts Blvd. The free event will run from 12 to 4 p.m., providing health resources and free giveaways for attendees.
Some featured services include maternity consultations, confidential HIV screenings, free menstrual products, emergency contraception, diabetes risk assessments and free blood pressure monitoring.
The fair will also have interactive activities and workshops, including yoga, art healing, henna and gender-based violence and mental health resources. Although the event primarily focuses on women’s health, anyone can attend.
The event is sponsored in part by EmblemHealth, For Women, By Women, Period, Northwell Health – LIJFH, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and Safe Horizon. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Assemblymember Khaleel Anderson are also co-sponsors.
Aminta Kilawan-Narine, founder of South Queens Women’s March, said attendees can expect to engage in a peaceful, intimate and culturally responsive environment that fosters a sense of sisterhood and solidarity for those in need of community.
She added that the event will help to foster conversations on “taboo topics” about women’s natural bodily functions. “Even the act of distributing period products in a public setting in of itself is shifting the cultural narratives around periods as being dirty or shameful,” she said.
Kilawan-Narine also highlighted the importance of creating a dialogue on emergency contraception, which will be distributed for free at the event. “Whether we want to accept it or not, folks are becoming sexually active at younger and younger ages and may need access to these types of products that they otherwise can’t get for various reasons,” she said.
She added that the Health and Wellness Fair will also serve as a voter registration event to bring awareness to the upcoming presidential election. “We are non-partisan, but what we can do is ensure that community members know that there’s an election happening, know what’s on the ballot, ensure that those who can register can vote and ensure that there’s less of an apathy towards voting,” she said.
Kilawan-Narine said she was compelled to start the nonprofit in January of 2020 after reading an article about an Ozone Park resident who was killed by her husband. “I was mortified because just literally the year prior to that, there was an almost identical case of Stacey Singh, who was also a part of this community,” she said.
“It raised all of these concerns in my heart and my mind that I’m thinking to myself, we need to cultivate a space where there’s a mass mobilization of people who will stand up for gender justice and stand up for women’s rights, regardless of their identity,” she said.
Kilawan-Narine said her journey of surviving gender-based violence in a past relationship also inspired her to launch the nonprofit. “This experience shaped me, wanting to strike change in the community to promote gender justice, promote gender equity to fight against all the patriarchal systems,” she said.
She started community outreach on March 8, 2020 – International Women’s Day – intending to host a women’s march in May. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, she began COVID-safe community events. The events included food pantry giveaways, menstrual product distributions and virtual workshops on healthy interpersonal relationships.
