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At Radiance, we help our clients collect and tell stories. Some of these are about short-term outcomes related to their work, like:
- “Did people begin questioning oppressive social norms after we launched our activist poster campaign?”
- “How did a funder’s grantmaking impact safety and well-being within organizations or communities?”
Other stories cover a longer arc.
A few years ago, we gathered information and lessons learned during a years-long, groundbreaking partnership between National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, a nonprofit leader on reproductive justice and immigrant rights, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, which takes legal action to support reproductive health and rights policy change. One of our strategies was to host focus groups with promotores (community health educators) in the Texas Rio Grande Valley. The promotores were excited to have the opportunity to share their stories and very comfortable with our process. After one session, participants enthusiastically agreed when one person said, “We would have told you anything!”
This week, we are wrapping up a report on the first 12 years of a project in New Mexico that is a model of how community members led the way in advocacy and organizing and got policies passed that affirm everyone’s right to health care and reproductive justice. Activists, staff members, and community partners expressed eagerness and openness as they offered important facets of the project through interviews, surveys, and tailored Ripple Effects Mapping sessions. (Stay tuned for more about this report, to be publicly released soon!)
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