Photo:Danielle Barnett

To make a donation: click here!


Sisterz of the Underground, a Hip Hop collective founded by women,
directs and inspires youth through teaching the Hip Hop culture. SOTU focuses on working with low-income and at-risk youth by creating social awareness and tolerance in regards to gender, race, class, age, culture, and sexual orientation. In teaching mcing, djing, breaking, and graffiti, youth are exposed, many for the first time, to a measure of success and accomplishment in the classroom setting or education system. SOTU commits itself to cultivating the minds and bodies of their students in an effort to inspire them to reach their greatest potential in their community.


Education Info:
Sisterz of the Underground started volunteering their free time to work with girls from lower income homes in March 2001. Since then their education program has developed so that the members of the organization get hired as independent contractors and/or receive outside stipends or grants. Our Hip Hop workshops incorporate the 4 aspects of Hip Hop: mcing, djing, breaking, and graffiti. Our goal in holding workshops for only girls in the beginning was to create a safe, comfortable environment for young girls to express themselves. All Sisters workshops stress positive and conscious expression and do not allow negative or disrespectful behavior.

Using Hip Hop as a tool, youth are able to express themselves and their everyday feelings. Hip Hop is a form of expression that they understand. Sisters of the underground hopes that in offering these tools that the students will no longer feel like they have to hold their feelings at bay.

In it's inception some of the all female groups that Sisterz of the
Underground have worked with in the past include: the 5th Annual Young Women's Conference, GASA (girls after school academy), Oasis, and Girls 2000. 2001 brought SOTU great opportunity for growth. Sisters of the Underground began working with coed groups and have continued to do so as the organization has grown. Some of the first groups we worked with in the coed arena are the Third Eye Movement, San Francisco Youth Commission, Delinquency Prevention Commission, the Mission Cultural Center, and Marshall Elementary School.

In 2002, Sisters started working w/ some new programs which include: 21st Century Academy, First Place, San Francisco Main Library, Hamilton Family Center, El Dorado Elementary School, E.R. Taylor Elementary School,and Life Academy School.

2003, enabled Sisters to start a series of workshops at different libraries in the bay area, Including Bernal Heights, Bay-view, Stockton, Santa Clara, Pittsburgh, and San Leandro. Sisters of the Underground has also begun working with Francisco Middle School, Fruitvale Elementary, James Logan High School, Mandela Arts Center, Richmond Beacon Center, Glide Family Youth and Childcare, and Edna Brewer Middle School.

In 2004 Sisters of the Underground became fiscally sponsored by Cell space a non-profit organization, and developed stong relationships with Aim High Academy, The Mission Urban Arts Program, Mission High School, Westin Ranch High-school, Gratton Elementary School, Bread and Roses, Thurgood Marshall Highschool, Bay-view Learns, Tennyson high school, community bridges beakon at everrett middle school, pinole youth center, horizons dj project, KIPP bay view academy, creative change project, gallileo and HOME project at Alameda point.

Sisters of the Underground began it's work in San Francisco and over the years expanded itself to the east bay, south bay, and San Joaquin Valley. Listed above are the schools that comprise the entire bay area and San Joaquin Valley


Make a donation to help build Def Ed: An Educational Experience through Hip Hop, an afterschool program run by Sisterz of the Underground.


To make a donation: click here!

Top of Page