17 May, 2017

Change The Narrative: Focusing on the Strengths of Young Women of Color

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:33:52-04:00May 17th, 2017|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: Equity, Youth|0 Comments

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Over a year ago, I was invited to join a New York City-based initiative to provide recommendations on improving the health and lived experiences of New York City young women of color. In one of our first meetings, we were asked to identify the struggles that young women of color face in the city. With flip chart papers labeled as “reproductive health”, “education”, “access to physical exercise”, and others, we divided into groups and developed lists of things we felt were impacting young women of color negatively.

When we were done, each flip chart was filled to capacity. It seemed good because we were able to identify so much that we can pull from related to providing recommendations to the city. But as I looked around the room at the other flip charts, I felt incredibly drained. “What are the solutions to all of this?” I asked myself.

I’m glad I wasn’t alone in my concerns, because another person in the room made a crucial observation: First, we were a room full of adults, and while we may work with (or do research on) young women of color and have a pulse on what the issues may be, we’re nowhere near being youth. Second:

There's danger in focusing solely on what's wrong with young women of color. This leads to fear-based solutions. Share on X

It’s draining to focus on what’s wrong, especially when those problems are highlighted within your communities or within the communities you serve or ally with.

This isn’t to say that we should turn a blind eye to the challenges facing our communities. But what if there’s a better way?

What if we identified not only the problems, but the ways in which young women of color show resiliency? What if we asked young women of color to show us what the solutions are?

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12 May, 2017

Self Care Corner: Be Kind To Yourself

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:33:16-04:00May 12th, 2017|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: self care, Self Care Corner|0 Comments

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and depending on who you are, it can be a difficult day to navigate.

One of the last memories I have of my mother prior to her cancer diagnosis was during an argument she had with my dad. I tried to mediate the situation, but was so overcome with emotion I started to cry. She came over to me and gave me a hug, told me how strong I was and that everything would be ok.

As I stood in the middle of my apartment on earlier this week, and thought to myself, “I could really use one of Mama’s hugs right now”. The tears came pouring out. Not so much due to the 16th anniversary of her death being last week, or that the first holiday I experienced after her death was Mother’s Day (although that also sucked), but because I realized in that moment how self critical I am of myself.

Earlier this week, I read an article on 5 strategies for self-compassion, and Dr. Kristin Neff shared:

“Self-compassion acts like a nurturing parent. So even when you don’t do well, you’re still supportive and accepting of yourself. Like a kind parent, your support and love are unconditional, and you realize that it’s perfectly OK to be imperfect.”

Isn’t it interesting how easy it is to show compassion for others, but not so much for ourselves?

When a sister or a close friend is going through something and they confide in us, we do whatever we can to make them feel better though affirmations, spending time together, or helping them seek solutions to their worries. Yet we feel that we have to hold it together. That we’re strong and shouldn’t let others see us sweat. And when we begin to sweat, the negative self talk and judgment creeps in. We wouldn’t dare say the negative things we say to ourselves to someone else. Yet it feels like second nature to participate in negative self-talk all the time.

When we show kindness to ourselves, we become intentional in being aware of how we’re hurting. It may be difficult to do in the moment, but when we catch ourselves before the negative self-talk begins, instead ask:

How can I show compassion to myself right now? How can I be kind to myself in this moment?

We do this by practicing non-judgment as much as possible and we remind ourselves that, in spite of how things look, we’re not as alone as we think. You can also reach out to a friend or loved one, focus on giving yourself encouraging words. Anything else positive someone can say to you will be icing on the cake.

And speaking of not being alone, there are many instances where I’ve felt my mother’s connection. In the last 1-2 years of my mother’s life, she would awaken at 4:20am to get ready for work. As a teen, I would wake up at 4:19am to watch the clock. When it was 4:20am, I would heat my parents’ bedroom door open like clockwork. In fact, I still wake up at 4:20am on most mornings, regardless if I was in a deep sleep just to look at the clock for a while before writing back to sleep.

Another thing that brings me peace is this quite from Law of Attraction guru and motivational speaker Gabrielle Bernstein:

“Though the physical form is gone, the spiritual connection never leaves. This is just the beginning of a different kind of relationship, a relationship that may be more profound than it was in the physical form. Always trust that loved ones who have departed are always supporting you, no matter what.”

The next time the negative self-talk creep up (especially on a day that may be triggering), use it as a reminder to be kind to yourself.

RAISE YOUR VOICE: How do you show kindness to yourself? Share below in the comments section.

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10 May, 2017

Try This: The Journey Map

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2017-05-10T11:28:02-04:00May 10th, 2017|Categories: Miscellaneous|Tags: Design Thinking, Human Centered Design, Try This|0 Comments

Last month, I introduced design thinking, a process many nonprofits and community groups are using to generate engagement with communities. Empathy is the first step in the process, and the user persona is an outcome we can use to develop programs and services for the ideal communities we want to reach.

Today, let’s focus on the second step in the design thinking process: Define.

After creating a user persona based on the empathy interviews and observation we’ve conducted, we begin to define the problem we want to solve, based on the insights of the intended user. Let’s do this by creating a Journey Map.

The goal of a Journey Map is to give a holistic view of what a stakeholder is going through from their point of view. In the case of creating a program or service, having a variety of stakeholders (a potential program participant, a program facilitator, and the program manager, for example) can yield insights into how a program may work from various perspectives.

Here’s what you need:

A stack of large Post-It notes in one color
Two smaller stacks of Post-It notes in two different colors
Some Sharpie markers
White butcher paper (or a clean white board wide enough for multiple Post-Its)

The steps:

Let’s go back to the user persona we created:

This example is “Nicole”, a nonprofit worker that works at a nonprofit that provides services for formally incarcerated women. She wants to create an awareness campaign that teaches formally incarcerated women about the Reproductive Justice framework and teaches advocacy skills to help formally incarcerated women advocate for accessible reproductive healthcare, both during incarceration and during the transition process. Nicole has now been given the OK to create the program from the executive director. Now, she can work on introducing the RJ framework to staff to generate buy-in for the program and campaign.

Each person get a stack of large Post-Its and 2 stacks of smaller Post-Its (each in different colors) and a Sharpie. The larger Post-Its will be the steps, and the smaller Post-Its will be the “pain points”.

Next, have each participant map out the process of creating this program from their perspective. For this example, let’s have Nicole create her journey map by mapping out her ideal steps needed to create a Reproductive Justice 101 presentation for staff and steps needed to recruit staff to help develop the program and campaign.

Using the large Post-It notes, Nicole creates the following steps and places them on the butcher paper:

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3 May, 2017

Ask Nicole: Advice on Being a Better Health Educator

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:32:48-04:00May 3rd, 2017|Categories: Public Health & Social Work|Tags: Ask Nicole, public health|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

This month’s question comes from Nichelle, a health educator with a New York City-based health care center. Nichelle writes:

I was hoping to get more information on resources available around reproductive health. I am facilitating a teen group at the health center, and I am not sure if this is up your alley but I wanted general tips on how to be a better health educator overall. This month’s focus for the group is reproductive rights. I want to give accurate information while also facilitating meaningful conversations with the girls.

Nichelle requested a phone conversation, so we scheduled a time to chat. Nichelle is based at a local high school and has been given an opportunity to create a series of workshops for young women attending the school between the ages of 14-18. When she held her first workshop earlier in the year on body image, she had low attendance. But when she held her most recent workshop, more students came. While Nichelle has been given the freedom to structure the workshops however she wants, she was clear on wanting a higher focus on intersectionality as opposed to feminism. I followed up with her after our conversation with the information we discussed, and today I’m sharing my advice based on preparation, implementation, evaluation, and resources.

Planning

As a health educator, your top priorities are to 1) provide medically accurate and age appropriate health information and 2) provide that information in a way that is memorable and action-specific. The key here is to start with the end in mind, and work backward. By the time participants leave your workshop, what are 2-3 key takeaways or calls to action you want participants to walk away with, above all else? Don’t overwhelm participants with a laundry list of things to know. You can always pique their curiosity enough so that when they have follow-up questions, you can address them (be it in another workshop facilitation or outside of the workshop).

Starting with the end in mind will give you laser focus on what aspects of a topic you want to cover, the key points you want to share, the resources that can provide additional information, and activities that can bring the information to life. This will help you to create a workshop structure that works for you. Also, an advantage Nichelle has is that she is familiar with the participants, of which they are very open with her about their lived experiences as well as topics they want to learn more about. When you know who’ll be in the space, you spend less time in the “getting to know you” phase and you can get right to work engaging with your participants.

Implementation

What’s one way to provide health information that’s memorable and action-specific? Have participants teach back what they’ve just learned using the Teach Back Method . The Teach Back Method helps participants retain information because they’re reciting it in their own words, and since they have to teach someone else what they know, it brings up the motivation to get it right. This works out for you as the health educator because it shows where you need to correct any misunderstandings (if any). Also, this takes the focus off of you being the only expert in the room, as participants come into the space with their own lived experiences. In the case with youth, this can be a great way for them to develop skills in peer education.

Another way is to use real-world examples of the topics you’re teaching. In Nichelle’s case, she wants to have more of an intersectional lens on the topics she covers. And since she wants to cover reproductive rights and the right to parent or not parent in her next workshop, how can she do that using a real-world example?

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26 Apr, 2017

How to Authentically Engage for Lasting Impact

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:32:24-04:00April 26th, 2017|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: Design Thinking, Human Centered Design|0 Comments

If you want to authentically engage and make a lasting impact, you need to get at the heart of a person’s lived experience.

This is the heart of the design thinking process. This process has been used by businesses for who knows how long, and anyone–social workers, educators, students and more–can use this process.

In fact, design thinking helped me fall back in love with the Reproductive Justice movement because I was rapidly burning out. I wanted another way to remain engaged in the movement, and wanted to reenter the movement from another angle. Being introduced to design thinking by CoreAlign and the American Evaluation Association a few years ago was the answer.

In short, design thinking (which came out of the Design School at Stanford University), is a structured approach to generating ideas by getting into the mind of of the audience you’re trying to reach.

We’re designers, in one form or another. Teachers develop class curricula based in district expectations and well as students’ learning styles. Social workers and others in the helping professions create evidence-based interventions that meet the needs of the populations they work with. Businesses create products based on user feedback. The best way to make something better is by going to the source.

Here’s the process:

The first step in the design thinking process is discovering why the audience does what they do, their physical and emotional needs, their worldview, and what’s meaningful to them. This is the most important step in the process because in order to create a solution, you must identify why finding a solution matters to them.

It’s having a conversation, and it moves people from being statistics to names and faces. Having conversations with the intended user and observing them in their environment allows you to see behaviors within the context of their lived experience. Insights from these conversations hones into what really matters from their perspective. Oftentimes, we think we know what the problems are, and we create programs, services, and initiatives that aren’t successful because the voices of the people we’re wanting to reach weren’t involved in the process.

I’ll go into depth of each part of the design thinking process later, but today we’re going to use a tool that allows you to to get at the heart of a person’s lived experience: The User Persona.

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Change The Narrative: Focusing on the Strengths of Young Women of Color

There's danger in focusing solely on what's wrong with young women of color. This leads to fear-based solutions. Share on X

Self Care Corner: Be Kind To Yourself

“Self-compassion acts like a nurturing parent. So even when you don’t do well, you’re still supportive and accepting of yourself. Like a kind parent, your support and love are unconditional, and you realize that it’s perfectly OK to be imperfect.”

How can I show compassion to myself right now? How can I be kind to myself in this moment?

RAISE YOUR VOICE: How do you show kindness to yourself? Share below in the comments section.

Like this post? Subscribe to the Raise Your Voice newsletter to receive resources, advice, and tips to help you raise your voice for women and girls of color.

Try This: The Journey Map

Here’s what you need:

The steps:

Ask Nicole: Advice on Being a Better Health Educator

Planning

Implementation

How to Authentically Engage for Lasting Impact

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