It’s a Saturday in June in Southeast D.C.’s Oxon Run Park, and 9-year-old Malaziah Peterson is in her element as she walks the runway of the outdoor amphitheater. She sports two braids, a puff of orange in her hair, a jumpsuit, and a pair of heels.

Malaziah was crowned Miss Southeast DC in 2019—and after watching her, it’s easy to understand why: She knows her angles and looks exceedingly comfortable on the stage, taking her time when moving from pose to pose.

Malaziah says she likes doing events like this as a way of building community. People in the audience “can go and tell their friends—and then their friends bring their kids to my event[s],” she says.

For Malaziah and her grandmother, Julia Tutt, who coaches her and other young models, pageants are about more than just clothes and runway skills. They’re about asserting that young kids can have a positive impact in their community regardless of age—and about instilling confidence in the young children growing up in the Washington Highlands neighborhood of Southeast D.C.

The event at Oxon Run Park was in honor of gun violence awareness month, with Malaziah and six other school-age girls. “Pick the kids up,” they exclaim at the end of their routine. “Put the guns down. We want to live.”

“Around there, they don’t get a lot—and that’s why I work so hard to get girls together,” Tutt says. “I build on their self-esteem, I tell them they’re pretty all the time. I tell them anything they put their mind to, they can get it.”

Tutt has the young girls she works with say affirmations. Like—“I’m positive, I’m strong, I’m a queen, I’m beautiful, I’m Black, I love me,” she says. “I teach them to be leaders, not followers.”

Malaziah is hoping to attend a pageant in Ohio next month held by Pure International, which hosts state, regional, national, and international competitions. She attended the same pageant last year and won the first runner-up prize for her age group (two D.C. pageant queens in their sixties also attended that same pageant, along with several of their grandchildren). Tutt has many of the expenses covered already but is still raising money for plane tickets and hotel accommodations.

Malaziah says she models because “I can get myself up to another level.” It allows her to travel and meet kids from all over the country. She got an early start in the world of modeling and pageants, and has been practicing since she was about five years old. But last year’s pageant in Columbus was a breakout moment. Malaziah stood out in a field of other girls that Tutt says seemed even more experienced and decked out in far more expensive clothes.

“She’s got this little Amazon $28 dress on, they’ve got these $400 dresses and $200 dresses on,” Tutt says. Malaziah’s skill, smile, and energy won the judges over.

But Malaziah doesn’t just model. In between pageant practice, coaching sessions with her younger friends and her classes at school (she celebrated her promotion to fourth grade at a ceremony this week), she passes out food, clothes, and other essentials to her neighbors through her organization, Malaziah’s Closet.

She started it because she wanted to help kids in her neighborhood who didn’t have as many toys as she does.

“One of my little friends, he was sitting on the ground,” Malaziah says. “I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ He said, ‘I don’t have a hoverboard’ … so I told my grandmother, and I let him ride mine.”

But sometimes Malaziah found that kids wouldn’t return the items she let them borrow.

“So I said, ‘Well, we need to do a little donation while we help kids get stuff,’” Tutt says. That’s how Malaziah’s Closet was born—and it’s grown to become a hub for resources for people in the neighborhood, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Yesterday, I passed out tacos, burritos, and chicken and rice—and it was nice,” Malaziah tells WAMU/DCist. But what she doesn’t reveal is the scope of her work.

Tutt and Victor Battle, an outreach worker with the violence interruption organization NAARC: Cure the Streets, say that Malaziah has served food to as many as 200 people a day during the pandemic.

Malaziah has helped Battle distribute the free meals provided to the neighborhood by D.C. Public Schools and other local organizations. She passed out meals in the mornings and during her lunch breaks from virtual school. Battle says when he started working in the neighborhood, he noticed what Malaziah was doing—“so I just stepped up and supported her.”

“It’s peace, it’s love, it’s unity, it’s togetherness,” Battle says. “A lot of people don’t believe that people at smaller ages are able to do the amazing stuff that she does.”

Battle looks to leaders like Malaziah to help with his violence interruption work, too.

“When the kids talk, it’s a little bit different,” says Battle, who also leads the Right Directions mentoring program. “It means a little bit more … when a child says, ‘Pick the kids up and put the guns down.’”

But while Malaziah is deeply involved in her community, she’s still a kid who prioritizes having a good time. When asked about her goals for the pageant she’s raising money to attend, her answer was simple: “Have fun, have a nice time, and win.”

When she goes to New York Fashion Week, where she’s scheduled to model in September, she says she wants to simply have a nice time—and she hopes they have a pool.

For Malaziah, these events are a light at the end of what’s been a difficult past year. Her father died in March, which she says has been hard for her. She didn’t like virtual school, because she missed seeing her classmates in person. And Tutt, her grandmother, survived a bout with COVID-19 last year.

By the time the End Gun Violence event was wrapping up, Malaziah had long-ditched her heels for a pair of sneakers. She planned to return home and maybe play some Roblox and watch Tik Toks.

And for her longer-term goals, she says she wants to be “a veterinarian, to help dogs” (she has three, currently).

Her grandmother is encouraging her to dream even bigger.

“I told her she don’t just have to stop there. I see Malaziah way beyond that,” Tutt says. “Malaziah is a special type of child, and I love her.”

Tutt says showing Malaziah that love is helping her through the loss of her father and extending beyond her, to other kids in the neighborhood. Together, they plan events and activities—like an upcoming “Fun Day in the Park,” where they’ll take about 20 kids to Oxon Run Park with hula hoops and bubbles to play in and around the creek.

In the meantime, Malaziah says she’s continuing to practice for pageants and modeling with her friends nearly every day. She coaches the younger kids, which can honestly be frustrating when they don’t live up to her standards.

“Some kids, they be messing up,” Malaziah says, exasperated. “I’ll be like, ‘oh my GOD.’”