6 Apr, 2022

Ask Nicole: Applying Reproductive Justice Beyond Programs & Services

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2022-04-05T09:26:50-04:00April 6th, 2022|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: Ask Nicole, Capacity Building, reproductive justice|0 Comments

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

Reproductive Justice presents an added layer to how organizations engage and hold themselves accountable to the communities they work with. While program design, monitoring and evaluation go hand in hand, it can be difficult to envision how this framework looks beyond programs and services.

From program feedback to developing leadership opportunities, it’s easier to see how to apply RJ to your programming, services, and data driven processes like research and evaluation.

But not everyone in your organization works in these departments.

If Reproductive Justice is an organizing framework that centers the leadership, perspectives and voices of people typically at the margins, how can this be applied in every area of your organization?

Let’s look at one example: Health insurance coverage.

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1 Jul, 2020

Ask Nicole: How Can I Raise My Voice When No One is Around to Hear Me?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:53:38-04:00July 1st, 2020|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: activism, Ask Nicole|0 Comments

I received an overwhelming number of responses from one of my recent blog posts, “Your Values Always Come at a Cost“. So much so, that the majority of that post’s comments came directly from subscribers to my Raise Your Voice newsletter via email replies.

This comment came from Amanda, a public health student:

One thing that’s given me solace during this time is that so many people are looking for Black voices, in all professional fields. And I want to capitalize on that! Your quote “There should be no question where you stand and you should only want to surround yourself with people who share the same values” really resonated with me. As I matriculate through my MPH program, I’m discovering the importance of raising my voice, as you always remind us to do. But I feel like, no matter what I try to bring awareness to, no one hears me. I know that I have to promote myself in creative ways outside of the traditional resume, and I’ve been utilizing social media to share my thoughts on issues I care about. But I feel discouraged because, between Instagram and Twitter, I don’t have many followers (combined it’s like around 700 total). How can I raise my voice when no one is around to hear me? Hardly anyone likes, retweets, or comments on my posts. Is it because what I’m saying isn’t resonating or that I’m not articulating myself in a way that would make people want to listen to me?

My consulting business began as a Tumblr blog. I used that blog as an outlet to share my thoughts on what eventually became my business’ vision, mission, and core services.

Over the years, I’ve slowly built up a social media following, where I’ve been more intentional about connecting, networking, and highlighting what I can do. But what I’ve learned along the way is that there’s more to building an audience than likes, shares, and retweets.

While these metrics can tell you how you’re resonating with your audience, unless you ask every single person why they’re following you, these numbers don’t tell the full story. Some of the most engaged followers you’ll have are the ones that don’t do these actions, but they’re still paying close attention.

I would consider myself to have a small social media following, but while promoting myself on social media as been part of the job, I’ve never landed a client based on something I’ve posted on social media.

How did they find me? They either asked around or they Googled something and came across one of my blog posts. Possibly an older blog post in which my voice and message weren’t as strong as it is today. They perused my blog and website and noticed how my voice has evolved and strengthened over time. I’m also sure my Raise Your Voice newsletter subscribers who have been around since my first newsletter have noticed this as well.

I took the time to get clear on who I am and how I wanted to show up for my audience, especially my clients. I wanted to position myself so that a prospective client could look at me and say, “She’s the right person for the job”.

Raise your voice regardless of the size of your audience. Use this time to strengthen your voice and message for the followers who are here right now.

The last thing you want is to suddenly gain an influx of followers and you haven’t strengthened your voice and message.

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10 Jun, 2020

Your Values Always Come at a Cost

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:50:15-04:00June 10th, 2020|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: activism|0 Comments

Image description: Two protestors in Washingon, DC, holding brown and white signs with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” written in black. Photographer: Yasin Ozturk

Over the last 3 months, I’ve been doing a lot of observation.

Observing the ways in which my client organizations have (or not have) been able to pivot their operations and programming while supporting their staff and community in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the shelter-in-place orders many states and countries are still under.

The coronavirus coupled with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Ahmaud Aubrey, Tony McDade and George Floyd in recent weeks have exposed what we already know: Our society is unequal and many of the systems and infrastructures we engage daily are not efficient, not accessible, and not equitable.

But lately, I’ve observed something else: Companies, organizations, thought leaders, and brands who have never spoken up about racial injustices before now bombarding our inboxes and social media feeds with solidarity statements and using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.

If you’re like me, you’re skeptical of what you’re seeing. While there are some companies that have made their stance known on current events and social justice issues for a long time, I’ve divided public response into five categories:

The ones that do care and always speak out on social injustices
The ones that do care but have never spoken up until now
The ones that may care but are unsure what to say because it’s not “on brand”
The ones that don’t care but also don’t want to come off as racist, so they speak up
The ones that don’t care and haven’t said anything

I’m seeing a lot of “I know this is important and I want to say something but don’t want to say the wrong thing/am not educated enough on racism and police brutality/don’t want to offend anyone” remarks. These comments are stemming from people and companies who would fall in the third category.

While I don’t believe that companies should be forced to make a statement on something they have no expertise in, many of these companies, organizations, thought leaders, and brands aren’t discriminating when it comes to who they get their money from. And since racism is embedded in many systems we engage with, these entities need to speak up about it.

When someone says they don’t want to offend anyone, who are they referring to? The people directly impacted by systemic racism, or the ones that aren’t? I’ve seen several people with large social media following focusing more on the number of social media followers they’re losing for speaking up.

If taking a stand against systemic racism and police brutality causes people to unfollow you or no longer support you, were they really your ideal people anyway?

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19 Oct, 2017

Should I Pass You the Mic, Or Speak For You?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:58:15-04:00October 19th, 2017|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: activism, community organizing|0 Comments

With the rise of storytelling as a form of advocacy and resistance, and various forms of research and evaluation that place communities, researchers, and evaluators on the same playing field gaining in popularity, I’ve been refining my thinking and processes in develop more effective strategies for centering the voices and lived experiences of women and girls of color.

When I’m working with my clients, I always have in the back of my mind who I’m really working for. And it’s not my clients. My clients are essentially the gatekeepers. They provide the programs, services, and initiatives that are designed to reach women and girls of color. Depending on what I’m doing with clients, I’m tasked with finding ways to engage women and girls of color to share their experiences in order to measure the program, service, or initiative’s impact. But before I’m an evaluator or program designer, I’m an activist and community organizer.

The Center for Evaluation Innovation’s 2010 brief, “Grassroots Action and Learning for Social Change: Evaluating Community Organizing”, posits that evaluating advocacy initiatives and community organizing campaigns should be participatory, more prospective rather than less retrospective, learning-based, culturally responsive, and less academic. The brief also shares a framework for evaluating community organizing campaigns, which includes:

Craft evaluation questions that are relevant and useful to organizers to generate buy-in and participation
Set clear yet flexible interim benchmarks that focus on outcomes related to various organizing components (such as participation and membership, organizing wins, and organizational capacity)
Utilize data collection methods that fit the style of the organization and tailored to capture various components of organizing
Develop buy-in and trust for successful implementation
Set achievable expectations to maximize learning and sustainability
Use evaluation results to create impact
Clarify what “success” means

Innovative and engaging frameworks and methods like these is what making program design and evaluation fun for me. And you’d think that processes like these are a no-brainer, but they aren’t for many organizations and communities.

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9 Aug, 2017

Try This: Storytelling for Reproductive Justice

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:45:38-04:00August 9th, 2017|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: reproductive justice, Try This|0 Comments

(Image: Renee Bracey Sherman. Source)

“Reproductive Justice can be used as a theory for thinking about how to connect the dots in our lives. It is also a strategy for bringing together social justice movements. But also, it is a practice-a way of analyzing our lives through the art of telling our stories to realize our visions and bring fresh passions to our work.” ~ Loretta Ross, “What Is Reproductive Justice?” (Reproductive Justice Briefing Book: A primer on Reproductive Justice and Social Change)

Why is storytelling so powerful? Because it works. Before video, social media, and other media we use today, many of us remember listening to stories as children from our parents and grandparents. Stories resonate with us and helps us build powerful connections with others. Sharing our story also helps others to build compassion, especially when they haven’t had the same experience.

Storytelling isn’t something new when it comes to advancing Reproductive Justice. Testifying before political leaders, using social media, blogging, podcasting, or video, attending speak-outs, or simply sharing between close friends and loved ones are some examples of how storytelling can be used as an empowerment tool. And today’s exercise will hopefully do just that.

This exercise can be found in the We Are Brave Toolkit: Building Reproductive Autonomy and Voices for Equity, created by Western States Center (with a few adaptations from me). The exercise was co-authored by Karla Castaneda, Diego Hernandez, Oscar Tzintzun, and Rebecca Shine of Momentum Alliance in Portland, Oregon.

Here’s what you need:

Sheets of paper to write on (or notepads)
Writing utensils for each participant
Flip chart paper and markers
Chairs arranged in a circle (or have the participants seated on the floor in a circle if they are able to)

The steps:

There are several parts to this exercise, but I’m focusing on the writing portion. The writing prompt given is

“I am from a body that…”

Using the prompt, spend 15 minutes or so sharing how Reproductive Justice connects with your identities. Being a young person, person of color, woman, trans person, person living with a mental health diagnosis, coming from a poor background, living in a “red” or flyover state, are just some identities we can write about.

Here’s a slight adaptation: In 2011, I spoke on a Congressional Black Caucus panel on on young women of color and reproductive health activism. I wasn’t sure how to craft speech. Jamia Wilson shared this process of connecting my personal story to current problems our communities are facing, and to the larger vision of a world we want:

The Story of Me: Share your story of how Reproductive Justice connects with your identities (This is essentially the “I am from a body that…” prompt)
The Story of Us: Share the current state of how reproductive injustices are impacting your communities using the prompts “We live in a world where…” or the prompt “When I look around my community, I see…”
The Story of Now: Share your vision for reproductive freedom using the prompt “We will have reproductive justice when…”

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Ask Nicole: Applying Reproductive Justice Beyond Programs & Services

Ask Nicole: How Can I Raise My Voice When No One is Around to Hear Me?

Your Values Always Come at a Cost

Should I Pass You the Mic, Or Speak For You?

Try This: Storytelling for Reproductive Justice

Here’s what you need:

The steps:

“I am from a body that…”

This Is A Custom Widget