Ebinehita Iyere is the founder of Milk Honey Bees and a highly respected Therapeutic Youth Practitioner at Divert Youth, working with young people who encounter the youth justice system and those who are impacted by violence in the community.
She is widely recognised for her pioneering work with young people using holistic, relational and creative methods to support their needs, as well as working with multi-agency professionals across systems and decision making.
Milk Honey Bees is a creative and expressive safe space for Black girls to flourish and put H.E.R (Healing, Empowerment and Resilience) first. Milk Honey Bees is rooted in the creativity, celebration and liberation of Black Girlhood by amplifying the voice and visibility of Black Girls in all facets of life, opening doors that can often be closed to Black girls and ensuring that they are able to put both their Blackness and girlhood at the forefront, enabling them to discover not only their full potential, but also who they are. It’s more than just a charity, it’s a sisterhood, a family.
At Milk Honey Bees, Ebinehita has personally worked with over 150 young women and girls who are often deemed as hard to engage, supporting them on their journey of healing whilst equipping them with social, employment and life skills that enable them to mobilise in their communities. Through the project, at least 60% of the girls have found long-term education and employment opportunities. The remaining 40% are school aged and have achieved better attainment. 100% have reported better confidence and improvement in wellbeing. Milk Honey Bees has also supported over 4000 girls online.
Ebinehita is an active and vocal advocate who is not afraid to speak up and highlight issues as well as seek and implement solutions, she is embedded in the community and committed to seeing results and changes.
Last year Milk Honey Bees was recently awarded significant funding from Sony Music’s Global Social Justice Fund to facilitate their Creative Connection project, created due to the need for a space to influence young women and girls alongside their role models, to feel inspired to become the best versions of themselves through wellness, healing and creativity.
Globally-renowned poet Rupi Kaur recently joined one of these workshops, which is testament to their importance and success. Sony Music UK are so impressed that they have committed to funding these programmes into the future.
Milk Honey Bees were also selected as the focus of Barbie’s new video campaigns to empower young Black girls and close the ‘dream gap’ with Radio One presenter Clara Amfo.
In lockdown in June 2020, Ebinehita partnered with a USA-based charity to launch Milk Honey Bees’ Black Girls Global Justice Initiative (BGGJI) – purposed with emboldening the voices of Black British girls through the teaching of an academic curriculum focussed on identity, creative expression and sisterhood. Engaging with each other within both a digital and physical space, BGGJI nurtures the emotions, thoughts and opinions of Black/Mixed Black girls from many different backgrounds, with an accompanying campaign to highlight how adultification and criminalisation impact Black/Mixed Black girls in educational, familial and medical institutions in the UK. The project is still ongoing.
Ebinehita’s full-time job as a Therapeutic Youth Practitioner at Juvenis involves working with 10 to 17-year-olds currently in police custody and going through the criminal justice system, offering them emotional support and more. Through this, she has become a leading authority on the culturally aware Adverse Childhood Experiences movement and more creative, therapeutically minded and trauma-informed approaches within organisations and with young people aimed at healing youth violence.
Alongside her day-to-day work at Juvenis and Milk Honey Bees, she is a Partnership Reference group member on the Mayor of London’s Violence Reduction Unit, bringing the typically unheard voices of marginalised young people to the forefront.