End of Year Update: 2023
Published on December 21, 2023 by EML
In the first few months of our fiscal sponsorship with OCF, we have been hard at work researching, writing, editing, and revising educational content. This content is building toward multiple goals simultaneously:
- Create online content with which to approach leading Reproductive Justice, Health, and Rights organizations in a campaign to raise the bar on adoption information available on existing platforms with wide reach, brand recognition, and valuable SEO.
- Create comprehensive and expansive content toward the evolution of an independent platform, which can then be leveraged and boosted through existing platforms/organizations we've built relationships with.
- Create training materials for organizations who either:
- Have direct contact with pregnant people navigating the adoption industrial complex
- Have influence over policy and practices that directly influence pregnant people navigating the adoption industrial complex
To these ends, we have used our generous donations exclusively toward paying collective members for their labor in 2023.
Our challenges this year have primarily been coordination of different schedules, capacities, and work styles within the collective. We have had lengthy internal processes coming to consensus on the articulation and application of our collective's values, principles, and practices as they apply to our current projects and beyond. We have also implemented collaborative processes surrounding material equity in our collective, which we will continue to implement on an ongoing basis. These have all been challenging conversations and our ability to trust and communicate with each other around such loaded and vital issues has grown significantly. We've also learned a great deal from working together as a group of mixed experience when it comes to adoption. Most of us have never worked in such a group where first/birth parents, formerly-fostered adults, and adopted adults work together toward a concrete goal and approach the inherent tensions, both in building relationship with each other and within the content itself.
We are excited to roll into 2024 with some excellent content and create a strategic plan for our next steps for leveraging existing platforms and creating an independent platform. We are also excited, as new members of OCF's fiscal sponsorship community, to connect with other collectives working in the reproductive, economic, and racial justice spaces. We can't wait to share more as our work continues to unfold in the new year!
Our challenges this year have primarily been coordination of different schedules, capacities, and work styles within the collective. We have had lengthy internal processes coming to consensus on the articulation and application of our collective's values, principles, and practices as they apply to our current projects and beyond. We have also implemented collaborative processes surrounding material equity in our collective, which we will continue to implement on an ongoing basis. These have all been challenging conversations and our ability to trust and communicate with each other around such loaded and vital issues has grown significantly. We've also learned a great deal from working together as a group of mixed experience when it comes to adoption. Most of us have never worked in such a group where first/birth parents, formerly-fostered adults, and adopted adults work together toward a concrete goal and approach the inherent tensions, both in building relationship with each other and within the content itself.
We are excited to roll into 2024 with some excellent content and create a strategic plan for our next steps for leveraging existing platforms and creating an independent platform. We are also excited, as new members of OCF's fiscal sponsorship community, to connect with other collectives working in the reproductive, economic, and racial justice spaces. We can't wait to share more as our work continues to unfold in the new year!