Rare Diamonds offer emotional and practical support to young women
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on December 5, 2014 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
From left, Tanisha Eutsey, leader of Rare Diamonds, plays a Thanksgiving game with Gebria Gray, 13, and Trinayah Harris, 11, at a group snack-and-chat meeting. Ms. Eutsey organized the group to mentor young girls and instill high self-esteem. Their first public appearance will be Saturday at the Goldsboro Christmas Parade.
Tanisha Eutsey was not always the polished, effervescent young woman she is today.
Growing up in Florida, she lived a hardscrabble life -- abused as a child, she was plucked from her home and became a ward of the state, having her first child at 16 and then placed in a foster home. She had a second child, all while fearing the same plight awaited her four younger siblings.
When she moved to Wayne County in 2005, it was a chance to start over.
She wound up taking in two of her younger brothers, essentially rearing four children while still in her mid-20s.
Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, though, there was a flicker of hope. She is now turning that spark into a guiding light for other young girls. Others had seen potential in her, she says, encouraging her while a student at Wayne Community College, where she served as Student Government president. Now 30, she is finishing her social work degree while substitute teaching at several area schools.
"I enjoy it because I see the need," she said. "Raising my two brothers and my kids, there's so much that needs to be done in the household but because parents are working, they don't have time to teach about cooking, cleaning, etc.
"Teachers don't have time to say, 'Baby, that's not how you sit and how you chew gum.' When they're graduating, they're not prepared for how to pay a bill, how to grocery shop. They're not prepared. They don't have it."
A few years ago, Ms. Eutsey began contemplating a way to mentor young girls, teaching life skills, social skills and even survival skills.
She wrote down every idea, every plan for how it would look. But then one day the bag that contained all her hard work was stolen from her car.
"I felt like I wrote a book and I was on the last chapter and someone burned it," she said.
The concept, though, was too important to go by the wayside. It was, after all, her "baby," and now she is just about ready to deliver.
She even picked out a name. Rare Diamonds.
"I think about it all the time," she said. "I look at myself as a diamond in the rough, the pressure that it takes to make a diamond. There's no diamond that's cut the same. Just like women. We're cut from different cloths. Because of that we're rare and we're unique."
She developed the concept into a non-profit organization for girls ages 5 to 21.
"I was going to stop at 18 but when I thought about it, my most lost years were when I got into high school," she said. "I extended it because we can help them with interviews, how to dress for interviews as well as other life skills."
The group will be a mentoring opportunity and a resource for the community, she said.
"You have churches, you have social services, you have these people in place to help but I have to wonder, is it really helping them or hindering them?" she said. "You help them pay their light bill but do you have someone to ask why you got in this situation and to prevent it from happening again?
Her goal is to work with young ladies, instilling a sense of worth and self-esteem but also equipping them for the future. The curriculum-based organization will provide emotional support, career coaching and also involve the members in community service.
She says she has already received positive feedback and encouragement from youth, as well as parents and even teachers.
"There's a lot of teachers that I have been working with across the county, they're ready," she said. "They're just waiting on me to say 'go.'"
Appropriately enough, the motto for the group is "Polish one diamond at a time," Ms. Eutsey said.
The "diamond" in the group's name is also an acronym -- Daughters In Action, Motivating Other Needed Divided Souls.
The group will make its official debut on Saturday, when members walk in the Goldsboro Christmas parade. At a recent meeting, several of the young ladies shared their reasons for being involved.
"I just want to be a role model for girls that are struggling," said Martie Rose, 15, a tenth-grader at Wayne School of Engineering. "I just want to help people that are going through a rough time."
Gebria Gray, 13, a seventh-grader at Eastern Wayne Middle School, said it had already helped her with self-esteem issues.
"I didn't like the way I look," she said. "A lot of people picked on me because of the way I look. I found out Tanisha's helped girls like that. It helped boost my confidence."
Information can be found on Facebook, for the Rare Diamonds Community Development Corporation, or RDCDC, and on Instagram, under daughters_in_action.