The NW Network staff, Sept. 2010 (l to r): Community Advocate Shannon Perez-Darby, Program Manager Kristin Tucker & Community Advocate Nathaniel Shara

A web of networks
This story was originally published in Solid Ground's September 2010 Groundviews newsletter. Typically Groundviews presents the stories of people whose lives have changed through their engagement with Solid Ground’s programs – yet much of our work is done with organizations, not individuals. To shed light on our National Service programs, we profiled a Martin Luther King VISTA Corps partner agency, The NW Network – and how MLK VISTA Member Yecelica Valdivia impacted their work during her year of service.

For 23 years, The NW Network has provided advocacy and support to bisexual, transgendered, lesbian and gay abuse survivors through education, organizing and direct service. Like Solid Ground, they believe that social change underlies service – and they embrace the notion that the work to end racism, classism, homophobia and other forms of oppression is as important as their work to end battering. With a staff of nine, their programs directly support hundreds of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and their outreach efforts aim to engage and educate many thousands more. And like most nonprofit organizations, The NW Network has more good work to do than available resources.

	Yecelica Valdivia as an MLK VISTA at The NW Network, 9/2010

Adding MLK VISTA Member Yecelica Valdivia to their team last year “allows us to give projects the attention they deserve,” says Kristin Tucker, Program Manager at The NW Network. Though they interviewed a dozen candidates, Yecelica’s homegrown experience as a leader in the Q Center at the University of Washington (a resource and referral center for queer folks at the UW) and other local organizing efforts made her a perfect fit. 

Kristin says, “The piece that Yecelica has had the most work in is our Community Engagement and Outreach program. We have offered Relationship Skills classes for the last eight years [based on] material developed out of one of our support groups for survivors of domestic violence. Yecelica got actively involved in that class, supporting the facilitation and coordination.

“And then she co-created a new class specifically for LGBT people of color. That involved writing the curriculum, recruiting students – the whole nuts and bolts of it. There is no way that work would ever have gotten done without her.”

Yecelica has also co-coordinated publication of The NW Network’s Relationship Skills Curriculum. “People all over the country have been wanting this information,” Kristin says. “Because in terms of engaging with the community as a domestic violence provider, people don’t always want to talk about that. People will talk about how to have better lives, so we had to figure out how to share this critical information in a way that people are going to actually engage with it. It is a massive undertaking. This is something that is going to be distributed nationally – one of the few revenue streams for the organization.”

Building relationships
During their year of service, National Service Members receive extensive support through weekly team meetings and anti-oppression trainings  – including Undoing Institutional Racism – all of which helps Members forge community connections for the organizations they serve.

“One thing that Yecelica’s time at The Network really speaks to is the extent to which she has been able to build relationships to other organizations,” says Nathaniel Shara, Community Advocate at The NW Network. As a former JustServe AmeriCorps Member, he says that Solid Ground’s National Service teams are part of a “web of networks, folks who were rooted in this community already and who have stayed. It strengthens the grassroots social service organizations to have that kind of spider web of relationships. It seems like a huge advantage to be able to tap into that network and have such developed leaders entering into organizations.”

The shared experience and anti-oppression analysis that is so fundamental to Solid Ground’s National Service teams helps keep Members well-grounded in their placements. “One of the important things that is so essential to our work at The Network is we all work in a big room together,” says Shannon Perez-Darby, a Community Advocate who oversees youth programming.

“So personal relationships are paramount. Yecelica’s being there and bringing a humor and a wholeness to her work is really wonderful – it really affects all of us. We want to create a reciprocal relationship. Yecelica is giving so much to us, we want her to feel that it is also feeding her.”

Phone:      206.694.6700
TTY:          7.1.1
Email:       MLKVISTA@solid-ground.org
FAX:         206.694.6777

Mailing      MLK VISTA  
Address:   Solid Ground
                1501 North 45th Street 
                Seattle, WA 98103-6708