YWCA Olympia: Eliminating racism and sexism to advance the social, political and economic status of all womxn and girls.
YWCA Olympia is a non-profit, multi-service organization that has served girls, womxn and families since 1945. We are a local association of the YWCA USA, an organization with 170+ years of history working across the lines of race and gender to provide services for survivors of domestic violence, shelter and housing, childcare, workforce development, civil rights, and more. While YWCA Olympia is connected to more than 200 YWCA’s across the country as well as a network of YWCA’s across the globe, we are an independently operated organization with the charge to be responsive to our local community. Our YWCA in Olympia is focused on the mission of eliminating racism and sexism to advance the social, political, and economic status of all womxn and girls. All of our activities are aligned with an Intersectional Model that places the leadership and wisdom of Womxn of Color at the center. We do this while also seeking to engage people of all races and genders in the collective work of the YWCA Olympia’s vision: All People are valued, live free from oppression, and thrive in a just society.
YWCA Olympia’s Approach, Strategic Goals & Direction
For many years, YWCA Olympia centered it’s focus and limited resources on a small number of direct service programs aimed at empowering womxn. While beneficial for the participants of these programs, the agency was neglecting its broader charge. Established by the foremothers of the YWCA USA movement, our collective power was to be thrust towards the “elimination of racism by any means necessary.” Today, the YWCA Olympia team recognizes this to include leading programs and the organization with an Intersectional lens and specifically centering Racial Justice, actively participating in movements for racial and gender justice, and advancing systemic change through public policy and advocacy. With more than 70 years of history in the Thurston County community, the reframing of YWCA Olympia’s priorities and the shift in how we view and conduct our work did not happen overnight. In fact, we still have a long way to go.
Over the past several years, YWCA Olympia has worked hard to align our programs and our organizational culture with our central focus of Intersectional Racial Justice. Through this process, an organizational shift toward more collective decision making and shared leadership has been seeded and new programs have been established. The staff and the board of directors have worked collaboratively to update YWCA’s strategic direction and the organization’s core values:
Centering the Wisdom of Black and Indigenous Womxn & Womxn of Color
Accountability
Interdependence
Nurturance
In addition, the staff and the board have worked together to adopt an updated Theory of Change and are currently building shared program practices. This alignment provides a clearer roadmap for program development and also articulates our focus areas and organizational scope for the community.
YWCA: A Center for Community, Participant-Led Advocacy, and Education
We are actively striving to center Black and Indigenous Womxn & Womxn of Color. We see womxn as inclusive, fluid, and based on self-identify.
We are working toward serving people of all genders who are impacted by racism or sexism.
With this framing, staff are committed to providing community building, participant-led advocacy, and education opportunities at all levels of the organization: youth, adults and community. We are additionally working to shift toward a community center model that will support our existing programs and expand affinity group opportunities for folx of all races and genders. In addition to these recent developments, staff are building a values-aligned centering model and conflict navigation practices in order to tighten our ability to move toward collective program and organizational leadership.
Through our values, organizational culture and programs, YWCA Olympia intends to: Create spaces that support individual and collective healing from the traumas of racism and gender-based violence; Shift culture away from white supremacy toward fully inclusive, anti-racist, multiculturalism; and Influence institutional change in Thurston County spaces to interrupt, and ultimately dismantle, systemic oppression.
All of this work is guided by more than 500 program participants, ten incredibly talented staff (three at 40 hours/week, six at 32 hours, two at 20 hours), one AmeriCorps member through the Youth in Service program, several work-study students/interns, an eight-member board of directors, and more than 100 volunteers. YWCA Olympia’s budget for the 2019 fiscal year is $738,955 with major support received through grants, earned income, individual donations and special events. YWCA Olympia views our current financial strongpoints as our ability to generate sustained growth via diversified funding streams, our ability to leverage grant and contract funding, several earned income streams, as well as our outstanding special events. We are now focused on general organization and programmatic capacity building, building additional revenue via mission aligned special events, major donor engagement, grassroots fundraising strategies, and multi-year funding opportunities.
YWCA Olympia Programs
Community
Intercultural Foundations & Intercultural Foundations Community Institute: A cultural humility and organizational equity training and consulting program that provides an innovative and effective approach to addressing inequality in our communities. The program is designed to function as an “equity overhaul” and includes both one-on-one and group consultation, as well as quarterly workshops, with leadership and team members from organizations and businesses in the community. Intercultural Foundations is structured as a long term partnership with three phases. Completion of all phases of the program model takes place over 2-3 years. The purpose of the program is to shift organizations into a social justice framework that contributes to institutional change. On average, Intercultural Foundations supports five to ten nonprofit, public and/or private organizations at a time. In 2020, Intercultural Foundations will also launch a Community Institute for individuals wishing to participate outside of their workplace. The Institute will create a network of folks in the non-profit, healthcare and education sectors who are deeply committed to fostering social change through their work, both personally and professionally. The Institute will equip individuals with skills and practices in three key areas of learning and development: Intersectional Race Equity, Healing in Community, and Cultural Humility.
Racial Justice Summit Series: (To Be Launched in 2020) The Summit Series events will broaden support for racial justice work in Thurston County, while building clarity and purpose for a community-wide shared vision of justice and inclusion. We hope to do this by increasing individual and collective awareness of white supremacy, and how interlocking systems of oppression can be addressed through racial justice work. Through increased awareness, we will build solidarity across our community’s wide range of identities, concerns, and strategies for anti-oppression. The Summit Series will do this by providing opportunities for the community to engage in education and reflection, to be inspired by work taking place here in our own community and across the globe, and to learn new skills towards innovative practices that put our values of inclusivity and justice into practice.
Youth
Youth Council: Youth Council is a Youth of Color centered program that connects youth to their community and builds access and support within the community. Youth Council offers peer support, community events, one-on-one mentoring and activities focused on supporting youth as they transition into adulthood. Youth Council is open for youth of all genders, ages 12 to 19, and includes specific activities and spaces that have been curated for Youth of Color and spaces that have been curated for femme identifying individuals. Youth Council serves 50 youth per year, many of whom are impacted by the intersections of race and gender, substance use, mental health, and/or juvenile justice system involvement.
Girls Without Limits!: GWOL! is camp for middle school girls and gender non-conforming youth. GWOL! offers culturally-relevant programming that promotes confidence, skill building, career awareness, and curiosity in science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM). Campers engage in hands-on learning activities, meet professionals who work in STEAM fields, and participate in project-related field trips. We work to increase underrepresented populations in STEAM fields and we want our campers to know that a future in STEAM is possible. Our practices include providing peer teaching/learning opportunities at each camp, centering youth voice in choosing activities, speakers and camp themes, and training youth volunteers to lead camps themselves.
Girls Advocacy & Impact Network: In partnership with Girls in Justice Coalition of Washington, provides a space where femme identifying youth work toward developing solutions to the issues that impact their daily lives. The program provides youth in Washington state an opportunity to advocate for issues related to juvenile justice, housing and homelessness, child welfare, education, mental health, and more. GAIN meets monthly and is a space for youth to learn how to advocate for the things they care about.
Adults
Womxn’s Economic Empowerment: A holistic, culturally-relevant, and gender-responsive workforce development program that prioritizes trauma-informed empowerment and healing while coaching participants to build skills that support their employment goals and financial stability. Womxn enter our program with histories of trauma, mental health challenges, substance use recovery, and experiences of ongoing racism, sexism and discrimination. Due to these barriers and the numerous requirements that participants are trying to meet while navigating state and local system providers, EEP intentionally aims to reduce barriers to participation. As such, EEP recently shifted away from a cohort model to open enrollment, which allows participants to enter EEP at any time, when THEY are ready, and to learn at their own pace, while engaging in the program components that are reflective of their individual needs and goals. Currently, EEP serves 50 individuals per year through femme centered programming. However, the program team is building new opportunities that include affinity group spaces curated for People of Color as well as workshop spaces for individuals of all genders . Workshops include digital literacy, job search/career development, healing practices and financial literacy workshops as well as community building opportunities.
Community in Action: YWCA Olympia is excited to partner with Statewide Poverty Action Network to deliver a series of advocacy workshops. Community In Action is a multi-county effort to encourage deep and intentional civic engagement in marginalized populations of Puget Sound region. In recent years, Washington state has passed bills to make voting more accessible at the state level. However, locally, there are no organizations or mechanisms to engage marginalized folks with other forms of civic engagement. This collaborative learning opportunity will address the gaps in our community’s understanding of advocacy skills, legislative process and power of storytelling to leverage our proximity to the State Capitol. The workshop is designed to engage community members at a deeper level to identify issues that impact their lives and creating avenues for first-hand experience in advocacy. This workshop series centers the experiences of marginalized populations to make influencing systemic changes relevant.
