Why YITDA exists.
From her earliest years, Christabel grew up in an environment marked by physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and the weight of adult conflicts that were never hers to carry. Deprived of basic needs and without her mother through most of her childhood and teenage years, she navigated that world largely alone. Trauma taught her silence.
But somewhere in the journey from that broken girl to the woman she was becoming, Christabel made a decision. She refused to let her circumstances define her ceiling. She began to serve. She began to speak. She began to discover that her voice — the one she had been told did not belong in any room — was exactly what her community needed.
YITDA was born from that discovery. It is not an organisation built from privilege or theory. It is built from lived experience — from knowing firsthand what it costs a young person to grow up unseen, unheard, and without anyone to show them what is possible. Christabel built the platform she needed as a girl — so no young person would ever have to fight as hard and as alone as she did.
"I grew up feeling rejected, unseen, and unworthy of a voice. Trauma taught me silence. But I refused to let silence be my story — and I refuse to let it be the story of any young person YITDA reaches."
