Working from the community within the community: A personal Black and Indigenous Feminist perspective on building an educational grassroots project

• In Event: Dreamweaving Our Radical Elsewhere: Black and Indigenous Women in Educational Leadership on Healing and Purpose

Abstract

Objective or Purpose:
Charities, not-for-profit organizations, and governments have traditionally and continue to force their ways and ideologies into Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous communities, thinking they know what is best for us and how to help us. As a Black-Indigenous woman pursuing her Ph.D. while growing up and continuing to reside in Little Jamaica, Toronto, I have benefited from the femtorship of Aunties, teachers, elders, grandmothers, etc., in the community. The purpose of this paper is to explore my own experiences in developing a youth-focused grassroots in Little Jamaica, The Youth Legacy Project, through a Black and Indigenous Feminist ethnographic storytelling approach and discussion the various ways we engage with leadership to regenerate, rebuild and self-determinism:
Disrupt the methodologies for researching organizational development, particularly in the non-profit sector and grassroots organizing:
● Explore the opportunities and challenges of developing an NPO as a Black Indigenous woman with Black, Afro-Indigenous, Indigenous youth in the community.
● Provide tools and insights to other academics, professionals, and community members who want to start their grassroots initiatives.
● Demonstrate and inspire how female leadership is fueled by and leads to healing and purpose.

Theoretical Framework:
This research is informed by a Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous feminist lens and social justice perspective, combined with Black and Indigenous ethnography and storytelling approaches. This paper will take a dismantling deconstructivist approach to exploring creating an NPO as a member of the BIPOC community also examines the context and realities of communities and power dynamics between NPO or grassroots leaders communities and post-secondary institutions by considering existing gendered, colonial, or socioeconomic power structures in the research.

Mode of Inquiry:
I conducted a rapid-review literature review into NPO/grassroots organizational development and establishment literature, focusing on the processes of building community trust, longevity, and community satisfaction. I also looked into the leadership styles of Executive Directors and Founders within a Canadian context, specifically within Black, Indigenous, Racialized, and marginalized communities. I supplemented this research with personal reflections, journal entries, and notes taken while establishing a grassroots organization in Little Jamaica, Tkaronto, The Youth Legacy Project, between 2023 and the present.

Substantiated Conclusions:
Although this research is currently underway, I have the following preliminary conclusions:
● NPOs face several challenges in their development and livability
● Lack of infrastructure/ systems
● Transparency and trust
● Femtorship
● decolonizing wealth
● deconstructing the aspects of vulnerabilities
● philanthropic harm

Scholarly Significance:
NPO/grassroots research has focused on an institutional macro-approach, where reflections and interviews are conducted with founders, often long after the NPO has been established. Furthermore, grassroots projects are a site of mobilization. I ponder how authors Tuck and Yang (2018) inquire about the meaning of projects, which they describe as a testament and revolt of the undertaking and responsibilities to actively and seriously show up to the criticality of commitment to the gravity of the work that sometimes we cannot shy away from when tension is in place. Rather than being a simple project, The Youth Legacy Project Tuck and Yang (2018) is an integral part of the manner of living.

Author

• Kayla Webber, University of Toronto