Bold Futures
Areas served: Bernalillo and Doña Ana Counties and across NM
Bold Futures leads policy change, research, place-based organizing, and culture shift by and for women and people of color in New Mexico. Bold Futures centers the lived experiences and expertise of those most impacted by an issue, engaging with people at the intersection of their identities. They work to build communities where all have what they need to make real decisions about their own bodies and lives, and all have room to live with respect and dignity. One way that they work with young women is through their partnership with United Young Parents at Breath of my Heart and with NM GRADS. Both programs have young parents (also referred to as teen moms/dads) who face stigma for being young parents and they choose to uplift their families. Together, they passed a state memorial that recognizes August 25th as Day in Recognition of Young Parents in NM every year. They do social media campaigns, celebrations and show appreciation for young families. As a reproductive justice organization led by women and people of color, they work alongside many families, organizations and people across generations in New Mexico.
Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women
Areas served: The 23 sovereign Tribal Nations of New Mexico
The Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women (CSVANW) works to stop violence against Native women and children by advocating for social change in Native communities. They take ownership and responsibility for the future of Native women and children by providing support, education, and advocacy using their strengths, power and unity to create violence-free communities. CSVANW supports adolescent girls through several of their programs and project: Native Youth Summit, Food Sovereignty, Young Indigenous Queers Retreat, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) advocacy. They also host the YIQR/Butterflies Retreat to support young folks who identify as femme, trans, two spirit, and gender non-conforming people; this retreat offers a space for young folks to come together for conversation and healing. This year, Native Youth Summit pivoted programming to center Black Lives Matter and create a space for youth to engage in conversations surrounding supporting solidarity building between BIPOC communities. Finally, CSVANW provides trainings to system workers and direct support to families and communities who have experienced the impact of MMIWG and works on a system level to promote safety for women, girls, and two spirit folks.
Earth Care
Areas served: Santa Fe and San Miguel Counties
Earth Care’s youth leadership development work is led by their organizing staff – young women of color who have come up through their leadership programs. Their leadership and capacity-building trainings primarily serve young women of color, non-binary, and trans youth. The campaigns and organizations they’ve built (Youth United for Climate Crisis Action, Mutual Aid, their Southside Community Development Council) are led by BIPOC women. Though Earth Care does not exclude cis men – they make a point to center the voices of our BIPOC young women, targeting recruitment toward young women leaders, and prioritizing their participation because they believe very strongly in equity and believe the voices and vision of women, transgender, two-spirited, and gender nonconforming or non-binary leaders will change the world. They offer leadership training for young parents and 99% of their participants are mothers. In all of this work the focus is to support their exploration of their gifts and talents that can serve their larger vision for their families, their futures, and the world. Earth Care works to support their community organizing skill development, critical consciousness, and civic leadership and advocacy capacity. They support their development of campaigns and projects that advance the goals they have for their communities.
Enlace Comunitario
Areas served: Bernalillo, Sandoval, and Valencia Counties
Enlace Comunitario (EC) transforms the lives of individuals and their families experiencing domestic violence (DV) by working to decrease gender inequity and intimate partner violence in the Latinx immigrant community in Central New Mexico. EC’s trauma-informed methodology informs how their DV intervention and prevention staff members provide free, culturally and linguistically appropriate services to immigrant DV survivors—95% of whom are low-income Latinx, Spanish-speaking womxn and their dependent children. EC’s intergenerational programs include: Youth Leaders, through which youth and adolescents (ages 12-17) train as peer educators to mitigate peer involvement in DV-affiliated behaviors; and Promotoras, through which DV survivors build leadership skills to become community-embedded health advocates. Promotoras predominantly identify as womxn, and a significant percentage of their Youth Leaders identify as adolescent girls or young womxn. EC also provides in-depth support to child witnesses of DV through life skills classes, as well as support and relationship-building groups like Jovencitas. As a womxn of color led and run nonprofit, EC works proactively to center the voices of immigrant womxn and girls, especially in scoping their programmatic growth through intersectional, intergenerational lenses that center gender and racial equity.
Indigenous Lifeways
Areas served: Navajo Nation and Zuni Pueblo; San Juan, Cibola, and McKinley Counties
Indigenous Lifeways (ILW) currently supports a youth development project that aims to increase knowledge of environmental and health and social justice among indigenous girls and two-spirit people. They train and provide funding for four Social Justice Fellows to engage in their Literacy Sphere Curriculum, and to share information about environmental protection, uranium contamination and other social justice issues within their local chapters across the Navajo Nation. Each of Indigenous Lifeways’s programs highlights the importance of having young girls and women participants in their Social Justice fellowship, IWWG and McKinley Mutual Aid efforts. They help gain resources ranging from basic necessities, food, water, baby supplies, feminine products, bras to healing circles, and educational workshops and forums around environmental racism and gender and reproductive justice to the younger ladies/two spirits folks from ages new born-21+. They collaborate with local organizations, community leaders and members to gain insights on the current needs in their communities from Navajo Nation, Zuni to our mixed status families. ILW recognize that younger girls will continue the matriarchal society and it’s up to organizations like theirs to continue to provide a safe space for young girls and women to thrive and share knowledge.
New Day Youth & Family Services
Areas served: Bernalillo County primarily, but young people from all over the state and tribal communities utilize the youth shelter and transitional living program
New Day Youth & Family Services mission is critical: to authentically connect young people to safety, community and themselves. New Day supports youth, ages 11-24, to provide safe refuge, housing options, adult allies, life skills for development and independence, connection to community, and support in creating a positive path forward. Their programs are designed to respond to youths’ most pressing needs, which includes adolescent girls of color. Their Life Skills Coaching provides an individual coaching relationship to support youth in identifying and achieving their goals at their own pace. Youth are connected to needed resources and frequently referred to Life Skills Academy classes where they can acquire further tools for success. Group support is also available for adolescent parents, covering topics that range from self-care to family planning. New Day provides a continuum of housing options that includes: youth shelter, transitional housing (6-18 months) and rapid re-housing for up to 12 months. All of these programs work together with their full system of supports. New Day believes deeply in seeing and honoring the unique identities and experiences of each young person and ensure that all programming supports young people questioning, exploring and naming their identity and experience.
New Mexico Asian Family Center
Areas served: Bernalillo, Rio Arriba, Lea, Sandoval, and Curry Counties
New Mexico Asian Family Center (NMAFC) provides culturally sensitive programs and services creating a Pan-Asian community that advocates for and supports itself. Their organization directly and indirectly works with adolescent girls of color. They run a monthly group called Tea Talk which is for cis and trans women, gender non-binary and gender non-conforming folks in the age range of 15-25. The groups have discussions surrounding books and TV shows, as well as speakers who come to discuss specific topics that range from self-care to sexual health. They always prioritize culturally sensitive and BIPOC speakers, artists, and authors in all of the material used in the curriculum. They also have had two youth art projects this year titled “Future Ancestors: Owning our Stories for Future Generations,” and “TRUE New Mexico: A Collection of Self-Portraits from young Black & AAPI New Mexicans Looking to Discuss and Dismantle the Tricultural Myth.” These two projects allowed for young artists aged 13 to 23 to have the capacity, access, and funding to create art and explore identity. They held weekly workshops that encouraged discussion and growth. Both projects resulted in incredible, powerful youth voices showing up in the community. Lastly, through their direct services and other programming, they are always working with families who have adolescent girls of color in their households. They believe by providing support, tools, and agency to the families themselves, they are the most capable of empowering young women.
New Mexico Dream Team
Areas served: Santa Fe, Bernalillo, and Dona Ana Counties
The New Mexico Dream Team is a statewide network committed to create power for multigenerational, undocumented, LGBTQ+, and mixed status families towards liberation. Through trainings and leadership development, they work to engage the community and allies, in becoming leaders using an intersectional, gender, and racial justice lens—to develop and implement an organizing and advocacy infrastructure for policy change fighting to dismantle systemic oppression. Their organization works with and supports adolescent girls of color through their field organizing consisting of school-based chapters throughout the state centered in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Las Cruces areas. Adolescent girls of color are part of their membership and programming throughout the state at the middle, high school and college ages.
Resolve
Areas served: Santa Fe, San Miguel, Rio Arriba, and Bernalillo Counties; multiple Tribal communities
Resolve approaches violence prevention from an anti-oppression lens. They prioritize work with BIPOC women, girls, and LGBTQ individuals because they know that the impact of violence disproportionately affects communities of color. The resulting fear and experience of violence can make it so that not only do many not get to enjoy nature or relationships in the ways they deserve to, but it silences the voices that our communities need to hear from the most. Resolve’s programs give adolescent girls of color the skills and practice to use their voices – to advocate for themselves and others, set boundaries, set standards for healthier relationships, and speak out as leaders against injustice. They do most of their work through collaborations with schools and organizations – by working in already-established communities, it ensures that participants will be in a supportive environment after our classes, and can uplift each other. While they work extensively with identity-specific groups like Santa Fe Indian School’s Brave Girls, they also work in whole school communities so that adolescent boys and others with more privilege are also learning to prevent violence and reduce the impact of oppression for their peers.
Santa Fe Public Schools Adelante Program
Areas served: Santa Fe County
The SFPS Adelante Program’s mission is to strengthen opportunities for the academic achievement and life success of Santa Fe children and youth who are experiencing homelessness. Adelante works with students in the Santa Fe public schools who are experiencing housing instability. Their clients range from birth to age 21 and include all ethnicities including Hispanic, Asian, African American, and Native American. In the 2020-2021 school year, they served approximately 537 adolescent youth (age 10-21) and of these youth, 267 identified as adolescent girls of color.
Sexual Assault Services of Northwest New Mexico
Areas Served: San Juan County, McKinley County, Eastern Navajo Nation, Jicarilla/Apache Tribe
Sexual Assault Services of Northwest NM (SAS) works in Northwest New Mexico and the surrounding Four Corners area to empower victims, provide crisis services and create a community focused on prevention. SAS provides services to survivors of sexual assault and abuse. They offer SANE support (Sexual Assault Nurse Examinations), Therapy, Rape Crisis Advocacy support, Primary Prevention Programming and Community Education and Outreach. Survivors who received SANE support are most often women and girls who identify as Native American. As of mid-2021, they provided 56 survivors with SANE Exams. Of those, 52 identified as female, 44 identified as Native American, and 11 were under the age of 12, 10 were between the ages of 13-17, and 35 were over the age of 18. SAS offers free, confidential, culturally sensitive and supportive services, based on the survivors needs at the time of the exam, and anytime during their healing process.
Transgender Resource Center of NM
Areas served: Statewide
Transgender Resource Center of NM (TGRCNM) provide advocacy, education, and direct services in support of transgender, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, and gender variant people and their families. There are two ways they serve this population: directly through their Youth & Family Program and through their education and systems change work. TGRCNM has support groups and direct assistance for transgender girls of color. They can assist with obtaining or updating ID documents, legally changing names, emergency financial assistance, peer support and advocacy. They also work to educate all types of providers and employers to improve safety and access for transgender girls and women of color. Their Transgender Cultural Fluency training has been delivered more than 2,000 times, often causing substantive changes in behavior and policy it its wake. TGRCNM also works to write and update policy throughout the state, and to draft and pass laws that help trans people. Modernizing the way that gender is updated on New Mexico birth certificates helps young trans girls of color have the appropriate ID documents as they navigate school and work.