Brooklyn, Brilliant, and Already Sustainable: Hekima Hapa on Teaching Black Girls to Sew

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Season 1 | Episode 17

In this stitch-and-resist episode, Dominique Drakeford sits down with textile truth-teller and cultural strategist Hekima Hapa—founder of Black Girls Sew—to talk craft, confidence, and community. What started as a mission to sew visibility into a whitewashed industry has become a transformative nonprofit that’s training a new generation of fly, fearless sustainable fashion leaders before they even hit double digits.

From upcycled sweatshirts turned self-expression to 10-year-olds mastering sergers like seasoned pros, this conversation threads together the deep legacy of sewing as cultural inheritance, the power of nontraditional education, and how making clothes can literally help remake lives. Hekima reminds us that sustainability isn't a trend—it’s how Black folks have always lived: resourceful, rooted, and radically creative.

Tune in for a dialogue that cuts through the noise and honors the joy, grit, and generational genius of young Black girls learning to stitch their own futures—one dart, one zipper, one fierce garment at a time.

MORE ABOUT HEKIMA

Hekima Hapa is a fiber artist and the founder of Black Girls Sew, a Brooklyn based nonprofit empowering Black youth and families through education in sewing, fashion design, and entrepreneurship. For over a decade, Black Girls Sew has bridged creativity and sustainability, cultivating economic independence and self-expression for Black girls. In 2024, she opened Sew Green Arts Studio —offering full-time after school programs in sewing, weaving, and sustainable arts.

“And so when I say to people that I grew up a lot of times with fashion and sustainability being just a way of life, not something that it was like, oh, we’re going to take our time to buy like organic cotton sweaters so we can prove how sustainable we are. It was really like, we’re going to use this sweatshirt that we bought for three other siblings have worn it. And now you wear it, and now you make it and style it on your own to be your own thing. So I just grew up in that way. I thought that everybody did. ”

— Hekima