Sixty years ago, a young girl in a stereotypically southern and segregated Austin would take a drive along a dusty country road that would forever change the course of her life.
That little girl’s name was Tasnim Benhalim; a sixth-generation Texan, filled with the kind of innocence only a child could have, but after, she would never see the world through those same rose-colored lenses.
Her family was driving around in Austin when they found a man who was hit by a car and left on the street right in front of a hospital. At this time, the hospital only accepted white people.
“‘Come quick, come quick!,” Benhalim said at that moment. “There is a man on the street, he’s been struck by a car!’” The woman at the counter said ‘Child, that’s a Black man, he has to wait for Brackenridge Hospital. He’s probably a charity patient.’”
Benhalim kept pleading with the woman at the counter to admit the man to the hospital but the woman turned her away saying ‘Child, did you not hear me? He has to wait.’ Benhalim walked out and her family watched as the man died.
“It had a very big impact on me that the color of your skin or the money in your pocket can make you alive or dead,” Benhalim said.
Ever since that moment, Benhalim has dedicated her life to improving the lives of others. She was an ESL (English as a second language) teacher at the University of California at Irvine, is the founder of her own consulting company, DiversityWealthLLC, and is currently the founder of an organization dedicated to making sure every single person feels heard, Allies In Community (AIC).
“I always had this seed in my mind saying ‘bring people together’,” Benhalim said. “I had studied a lot in college and my masters centered around culture. There was this quote by Confucius that I liked saying, ‘By nature people are almost alike.’ This means that our human conditions are very similar but by expression we are wide apart – I used to think about that a lot.”
Benhalim started AIC after receiving a call from former Coppell city manager Clay Phillips and former deputy city manager Mike Land asking how they could better understand and connect with the citizens of Coppell. Together, they came up with a plan for something that would require community involvement.
AIC is a program that seeks to educate people on how to interact in diverse communities through their motto “Connecting cultures and generations to build bridges of understanding and belonging.” It has a mentorship program that seeks to strengthen these skills as well as a youth program.
“We learned about how even though we are outsiders to others we can support one another,” said Coppell High School junior Ayusha Baral, AIC youth program member. “We are not all from the same background, especially with Coppell being such a diverse community, but we can all respect each other.”
One of the pillars of this organization is ensuring that all people, no matter their cultural background, can come together to peacefully coexist and work towards a more diverse future.
“We can not shine the light on the future unless we know where we came from,” Benhalim said. “It’s brilliant and beautiful and some of it is uncomfortable but we need to look at it and have the conversation so that we can really appreciate each other.”
AIC also works on celebrating imperfections, teaching its cohorts that that is what makes all human beings unique.
“The world doesn’t need perfect people,” AIC ambassador lead Yvonne Silva said. “It needs all people. You were created for a purpose and that’s why we have Allies in the Community; we want them to know ‘we see you.’”
If Benhalim had never come across that man in the road the world might not have had AIC today, but the world is a kinder place today because she did.
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