Youth Archives - Page 3 of 5 - Nicole Clark Consulting

29 Aug, 2012

Ask Nicole: How Can We Create More Affirming Spaces for Women & Girls of Color?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T18:06:29-04:00August 29th, 2012|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: Ask Nicole, Youth|0 Comments

Do you have a question that other Raise Your Voice community members can benefit from? Contact me and I’ll answer it!

I recently received an email from a young woman of color and a recent college graduate. She contacted me to ask if I could point her in the direction of women of color organizations in her area that are open to having volunteers, as the organizations she’s already contacted currently do not have any volunteer opportunities. She shared with me that, being a recent college graduate, Latina, and the first of her family to attend college, she has a passion to give back to her community and to empower others.

What heightened my interest in her email was that she mentioned that she was an active member of a women of color group on her college campus. She described the campus group as a multi-generational safe space for women of color on campus, which meets monthly. The monthly gathering, complete with food and fellowship, invites current students and staff to share experiences and advice over a chosen topic of the month (spiritual wellness, intellectual wellness, environmental wellness, among others.) Her group has also hosted a woman of color retreat on campus as well as a gala to recognize the many contributions of the women of color on campus.

I responded back to her, letting her know that I will look into women of color organizations in her area, but I also gave her the suggestion of creating a similar supportive group based on her campus group. Here in New York City, I am part of the New York City Reproductive Justice Coalition. We meet once a month to discuss what’s happening locally and nationally around reproductive justice and women and girls of color. What we’re currently doing every month sounds very similar to what her campus does: We connect, inform, enlighten, strategize, and fellowship.

The need for more spaces for women and girls of color to grow, connect, and be affirmed in a world that tells us that we’re in the minority is crucial. Instead of it being a matter of chance, women and girls of color spaces need to be a given, a space where women and girls of color are mentored and supported by peers who have their best interest in mind. In a perfect world, there would be no need for spaces like these. Until then, the more spaces we have that tell women and girls like us that we matter, the more likely we will be able to step up and pay it forward.

Are you interested in starting a space for women and girls of color in your community or on campus? Here are a few ideas to get you started: (more…)

1 Aug, 2012

We’re All In This Together: Women & Girls of Color Supporting Each Other

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T17:50:53-04:00August 1st, 2012|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: Women of Color, Youth|0 Comments

(Image Source)

In my interactions with my blog readers either in person or through social media, I’m always aware that the majority of my blog readers are Black women & girls. Understandably so. It’s easier to relate to someone when you believe there’s a commonality, and in many cases that can be skin color and/or cultural background. Despite knowing this, I’ve always tried to develop content and workshops that speak to all women and girls of color, and I regularly invite other women and girls of color to contribute to my blog. On Twitter this week, I entertained the idea of shifting my focus to primarily Black women and girls and the organizations that serve them. However, a follower of mine tweeted to me: Everyone needs the message, in my humble opinion.

The focus of this blog are on things that I believe allow for others to find a commonality. For example, lawmakers creating policies that attack a woman’s bodily autonomy affects all women and girls, not just one select group (even when it feels as though that group is being targeted). Regardless of race, women and girls are constantly subjected to street harassment while in public spaces. When it comes to discussing sex and sexuality with the mother figures in our lives, women see that some of the barriers that prevented them from discussing sexuality are common across race and culture.

As women and girls of color, we need to be allies for each other. While it’s important to know what’s happening in your own community, our voices become more powerful in collective. While many of the issues that we believe we deal with may be “packaged” differently, we can’t stand on the sidelines while looking at another group and think, “I don’t have to worry about that happening in MY community”.

How can we as women and girls of color support each other? (more…)

16 May, 2012

Do You Know Who You’re Talking To?: Effective Messaging for Young Women of Color

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T17:46:14-04:00May 16th, 2012|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: Youth|0 Comments

This weekend, I will be attending and speaking at the New York City Reproductive Justice Media Conference , sponsored by the New York City Reproductive Justice Coalition, in collaboration with Women’s eNews. This conference will focus on re-framing the discussion on what reproductive justice means, how to create effective messaging that is tailored to your audience, and how to communicate with the media and public about reproductive justice. I will be speaking on effective messaging for young women of color (YWOC). I’m looking forward to connecting, building, and learning as much as I can this weekend from some amazing activists and journalists. This is a very important discussion to have, and with 2012 presidential election just 6 months away, everyone is trying to push their issues and campaigns to the forefront. Not only that, but many want definitive answers on where the lawmakers stands on the issues they care about.

(What is the reproductive justice framework, you may be wondering? Here’s an awesome PDF by Forward Together (formally Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice) , which highlights in detail what the reproductive justice (RJ) framework is, as well as the differences between reproductive health, reproductive rights, and reproductive justice.)

When it comes to young women of color (YWOC), there are so many coalitions, groups, organizations, TV shows, music, movies, books, programs, and other entities out there vying for their attention. Historically, the voices of YWOC have often not been meaningfully included in progressive movements. With the exception of organizations that specifically target YWOC for their campaigns and programming, YWOC’s inclusion in the developing, delivering, or receiving end of messages directed towards them and designed with their values, beliefs and needs in mind, have been few and far between. Also, just because a message resonates with YWOC doesn’t mean that it’s positive.

How can we effectively reach them when there are so many influences out there? Do we know who you’re talking to?

Why Messaging to Reach Young Women of Color (YWOC) is Important

Back in 2007, I co-presented a workshop called “Do You Know Who You’re Talking To?: Effective Messaging for Young Women of Color (YWOC)” during the 2007 Women, Action, and Media (WAM!) Conference in Massachusetts, with my good friend Candace Webb, MPH, CHES. In front of a packed room, we discussed why creating effective messaging to reach YWOC is important.

In general, one of the reasons why creating effective messaging is important is because, in order to get what you want (develop better policies, raise more funding, get more press, etc.), you need some segment of public support to move your agenda forward. Secondly, raising awareness and making sure that the public is informed are other reasons why messaging is important. One thing that Candace mentioned during our presentation is that messaging that’s thoughtful and succinct can enable organizations and communities to find a unified voice on a specific social justice campaign. Third, messaging is important for grabbing attention. Think of news reports, magazine articles, and songs out there that have instantly grabbed your attention. Notice that many of the messaging may not have been positive, but it somehow stirred something within you that prompted you to take action, whether it was turning up the volume on the TV, reading the article more thoroughly, or turning off the radio.

Despite YWOC’s involvement in social justice work and the need for more leadership opportunities, very little research has been done on effective strategies for reaching YWOC. When asked why messaging to reach YWOC is so important within progressive movements, Daisy Hernandez and Pandora L. Leong of In These Times (2004), has this to say:

“Progressive movements have a long history of internal debates, but for feminists of color the question of racism and feminism isn’t about theories. It’s about determining our place in the movement. As the daughters of both the civil rights and feminist movements, we were bred on grrlpower, identity politics, and the emotional and often financial ties to our brothers, fathers, aunties, and moms back home, back South, back in Pakistan, Mexico or other homelands. We live at the intersections of identities, the places where social movements meet, and it’s here that our feminism begins.”

In order to help cultivate the next generation of young women activists, we need to do a better job at reaching out to young people in ways that affirms them and helps them to raise their voices. Also, we need to recognize that YWOC are dealing with a lot of issues these days: racism, sexism, ageism, immigrant status, education, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, among others. How can we develop effective messaging for YWOC that’s affirming, inclusive, and timely? How can we help YWOC decipher between messaging that’s for their benefit versus messaging that’s used to stigmatize, put down, and exclude their voices?

What Are Some of the Basic Principles for Messaging? (more…)

5 Apr, 2012

Can We Love God & Sex?: Religion, Media, & Young Women’s Sexuality

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T17:43:51-04:00April 5th, 2012|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: sexuality, Youth|0 Comments

Over the past weekend, I attended the MOMENTUM Conference: Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism, and Relationships in Washington, DC, to facilitate a workshop entitled “Can We Love God and Sex?: Young Women, the Media, and Making Room for Sexuality & Spirituality”.

This was my first time attending the MOMENTUM Conference, and I was glad that my workshop was accepted because the media and how we’re portrayed affect us all, and many of us may have grown up in households where religion was also encouraged and practiced. I wasn’t quite sure how the workshop would pan out (I technically put the workshop fully together 24 hours before I was scheduled to present), plus I’d never presented on such a complex topic before. I wanted to facilitate the workshop based on my own personal experiences. Even in my adult years, I still continue to work through my “stuff”: trying to remain a critical thinker in a society where it’s very easy to become influenced by what you see and read. When I was younger, I held onto the notion of being “the good girl”, and I was often told that I was the good girl. I wanted to continue to live up to that expectation, and I think in some ways we all want to live up to an image that is pleasing to others, and shows us in a favorable light.

Yet a few of my workshop attendees asked: What exactly is a “good girl”?

In the United States, we live in a contradictory society regarding sex and sexuality. Women are expected to remain virtuous until their wedding night while men are encouraged to be sexually experienced prior to marriage. Young men can be praised for their sexual prowess by having sexual relations with multiple young women, yet young women (and older women, for that matter) are expected to have as few sexual partners as possible to avoid be labeled a whore or a slut. (And not only does this confuses young women, it also places an unfair burden on young men who may feel pressure to live out this expectation).

And when you add the influence of the media into the equation, it all just sucks.

Sex is everywhere: magazines, books, television, music, film, and other forms of media. Sex is taboo in American society, yet many forms of media highlight unprotected sex…or, in the extreme sense, it stresses refraining from sexual activity until you’re married (with no mention of learning about how your body functions, contraception, what to do when you don’t want to remain pregnant, or encouraging preventative methods against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs.)

Instead of discussing the relationship between religious/spiritual views on sex and sexuality and how women and girls are portrayed in the media, many often go to great lengths to keep religion/spirituality and images of women in the media distanced from each other. This is often problematic for women and girls of color. Stereotyped images in the media of Black and Latino women in particular often emphasize the extremes—from the Black “video vixen” and “hot” Latina, to the Bible-toting mother of the Black Church and the rosary-clutching Latina Catholic—increasing the denial of voices to be heard on how we view our sexuality and spirituality. Although women have made great strides in advocating for positive images of women and of sex and sexuality to include that, indeed, sex is not “dirty” or “sinful”, the mindset that “good girls don’t have sex” is still deeply rooted.

Still the question remains; What exactly is a “good girl”? (more…)

29 Feb, 2012

What I Wish My Mom Would Have Told Me About Sex

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T17:41:38-04:00February 29th, 2012|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: Parent-Child Communication, Youth|0 Comments

Between February 13-24, 2012, I asked the following question:

If there is one thing you wish your mom would have told you about sex and sexuality while growing up, what would it have been?

I asked friends, family members, colleagues, Facebook friends, people who’ve “liked” my Facebook page, newsletter subscribers, and my Twitter followers this question, and I got some cool, interesting, funny, and thought-provoking responses.

Once again, I’m using SlideShare to present my results to you.

(Source: http://www.slideshare.net/)

Raise Your Voice: Did anything surprise you, inspire you, anger you? Maybe you’ll see yourself in the responses. If not, share what your experience was like in the comments below.

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Ask Nicole: How Can We Create More Affirming Spaces for Women & Girls of Color?

We’re All In This Together: Women & Girls of Color Supporting Each Other

Do You Know Who You’re Talking To?: Effective Messaging for Young Women of Color

Can We Love God & Sex?: Religion, Media, & Young Women’s Sexuality

What I Wish My Mom Would Have Told Me About Sex

Raise Your Voice: Did anything surprise you, inspire you, anger you? Maybe you’ll see yourself in the responses. If not, share what your experience was like in the comments below.

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