0:00:00.2 Louis Marvin: Welcome to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center on understanding, responding to and preventing sexual abuse and assault. I'm Louis Marvin and I'm the training specialist at the NSVRC. On today's episode, we're joined by Sadé Swift, Sistas Van coordinator at Black Women's Blueprint to talk about that program, Sistas Van.

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0:00:33.5 LM: Sadé, welcome to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about your work, particularly on health equity in preventing sexual violence.

0:00:43.9 Sadé Swift: Black Women's Blueprint is a civil and human rights organization that ensures the needs of survivors and women and girls since 2008, and we've been strengthening the community in Brooklyn by providing essential needs for the past 15 years in Brooklyn, they really thinks about bringing access to things like doulas and midwives and birth workers to underserved communities and women that otherwise wouldn't have access to it. And we also are able to really have trainings, healing circles, funding resources to provide women and girls with access to things that they otherwise wouldn't have access to, for example, contraception, to be able to have healing circles, again, and really thinking about what it means to have liberatory practices and healing justice spaces in places that traditionally wouldn't practice those things, and we think about what it means to address health inequities and be able to... Just what prevention looks like and means, especially when the livelihoods of women and girls are constantly changing, especially black girls and black women, and really wanting to think about how can we as an organization continue to meet the needs of these folks.

0:02:20.0 SS: And one of the things that recently came up with this year, but phrased the term in... Acquaint the term, sorry, in 2019, which is The Sexual Abuse to Maternal Mortality Pipeline, sorry. And really being able to survey the community around how this pipeline has worked in their lives and really capturing that data that otherwise wouldn't be captured.

0:02:47.6 LM: Awesome. That's so much great work. And I love how you said that the needs of the women and girls who you're working with, particularly black women and girls, are constantly changing and are constantly adjusting your work to meet those needs, because that is one of the big themes of this podcast series that we're doing, particularly in light of the pandemic. So you've just been doing some great stuff, and we know that one of the services that you offer through your work is the Sistas Van, and that is a trauma-informed, survivor-centered mobile healing unit, and that that's one of the areas that you especially made shifts to your work due to the pandemic, and that's a program that you coordinate, so can you tell us how Black Women's Blueprint and you did that? And other ways that you've had to change or adjust your work in light of COVID.

0:03:42.7 SS: Yeah, so one big shift to Black Women's Blueprint is that we went digital, in the sense that all of our staff is working from home and from different states, and the Sistas Van really shifted to responding to the immediate need of people in New York, women and girls, black women and girls in New York, by providing things like food, contraception, clothes, connecting people to direct services. So one of the things that I had to develop was really building out community support in all the boroughs, so I went out, not physically, but online, and looked at what were the mutual aid groups that existed within these communities, and really being able to see like, would you benefit from having a mobile van that can come with supplies to your area.

0:04:44.4 SS: And one of our biggest partners right now is Crown Heights Mutual Aid, who provides us with all of our food every week to serve about 60-100 families every week, and that we take the van to every single borough in different neighborhoods where we're seeing either spikes in COVID, or where we're seeing that there is a high percentage of people that just are in need, when you drive by and there's soup kitchen lines that are literally like hundreds of people, we're able to just pull up and say like, "Hey, you can hop off the line and we can also support," and just realizing that this was something that was needed, was really from just people hitting us up and being like, "Hey, you have this van, is there anything that you can do with it while COVID is happening?" And we immediately jumped on the opportunity to really be out there.

0:05:38.7 SS: The other thing that we're seeing is, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, was people not having proper PPE, not knowing where to go for testing, all of these other things. So we immediately jumped on that and were able to create resource guides and be able to send resources to folks... I'm also Spanish speaking, so my phone was literally the hotline for whatever resources people needed, and it really hasn't stopped. We started this in April.

0:06:13.8 SS: Shifting our work with Sistas Van, started in April, and til now, we are still very much having an influx of people who need support and need food and still need PPE and are trying to figure out what it means to be pregnant during a pandemic and needing all these supplies or having a partner passed away because of the pandemic and not knowing what to do. And so there's still so much going on and I'm grateful that I'm able to support and lead such a powerful program like Sistas Van with the help of Denise, whose a driver, and that we've really been able to cultivate such a powerful, on-the-grounds effort, that's really like community run, and we respond wherever we're needed.

0:07:07.8 LM: That is just overwhelming to hear, as somebody who isn't living in New York, but has read a lot about the early wave in New York city, to think of you driving around with your van, getting folks the things they need is super powerful. So you said a few things that I was really excited about and wanted to follow up on. One of them is the... How... It seems like you were really well-positioned in communities to kind of immediately respond and hear the needs. And so I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. About how Black Women's Blueprint was already doing work to address health and equity and how that translated to just the ability for you to hear what was needed, and be so connected to community in order to do that mobilizing right away. How was the work that you were already doing before COVID connecting you to community in a way that helped you activate? 

0:08:12.2 SS: Yeah. So social media played, I think a huge role in this. One of the programs that Black Women's Blueprint runs is Sisters Circles which is our healing circle for survivors, and we had contact with folks before, and so it was really reaching out to the folks that we had worked with before, our partners, our funders, to say like, "Hey, we're thinking about shifting our work with Sistas Van. What are communities that you are currently working with that we can also respond to? You may not have an on the grounds effort right now during COVID, but we do, so how can we collaborate to make this possible?" One of the spaces that Black Women's Blueprint is involved in is the Women of Color Solidarity Economy, which is a Facebook group that focuses on exchanging food, supplies, transport, and other services. And so we immediately as soon as we started to shift our work dropped in a note there, and this group is full of organizers from around the city, around the US, to really think about and ask the question of, "What do you need right now? What would be most helpful during this pandemic? What would be most helpful this week to get you through? And what are the communities that we need to be hitting that you know as people on-the-ground, as organizers who are in community right now?"

0:09:36.4 SS: And so we really leveraged our relationships with the organizers that we knew. I'm well-connected. I'm an organizer myself and really just reached out to friends to be like, "Hey, I know that you work with children centers or children shelters, what are things that children right now would need, especially after transitioning out from their home to a shelter?" And a lot of it was like, "Art! We need art supplies. We need things to keep our kids occupied, you know, transitioning from in-person learning to virtual learning. We need something to decompress, right?" And so we got herbs and were able to like, "These are relaxing teas." That we were able to ask for, for people to donate to give to folks while we were out there. So really being able to leverage our relationships virtually because that was what we had access to and also our partners, our funders really aided in saying like, "This is where you need to be, these are the people that we're seeing that need support." And we responded.

0:10:43.6 LM: So good. You're just listing so many things. I just wonder if you could talk about how big is the van? How often does it have to restock? [chuckle] And just what does it look like on the inside? Could you tell people a little about those kinds of things? 

0:11:00.1 SS: Sure. So the van is blue, which is so cute. It says "Sistas Van" on the side and it's a wheel chair-accessible van. It fits about, I would say 13-15 people, but we've taken the back seats out so that we have bins in there. And in the van, we at all times have things like Plan B, pads, tampons, food, that's nonperishable, of course. We have things like clothes. Right now, we just got a huge donation of gloves, socks, and hats for the winter time. There's so many folks experiencing homelessness right now and those small things really do make a difference. We also have a bunch of toiletries. One big thing we've also encountered is that a lot of the folks that meet with Sistas Van are experiencing homelessness and so that we're able to provide them things that will get them through their week. And we restock the van every single week, so every week is a new set of things that come onto the van and we've had people literally from April to now still donating things. People mail us things.

0:12:18.9 SS: There was a few people around the US actually that sold masks to send us or businesses that provided a percentage of their proceeds to us, which would then help with supporting the van like getting gas and getting it serviced and all these other things. And so really, it's been a community effort. It's been people who are passionate about this work donating to us and us replenishing the van as things come and really being able to put out, "What is it that we need?" And people being able to respond. And so for example, the call for art or art supplies was one that we saw as a need and we put it out and somebody donated like two thousand crayons, to give out to children. We also got children's books, and so yeah the van is constantly changing as far as what the content inside is, but we're really grateful for community who supported us in getting all of those things together.

0:13:23.1 LM: Nice, that's great. And it makes me think too, that there are people who are donating these things, and keeping you in mind, I just wonder about people around town, have you seen a shift from like, "What's this van?" to "Hey, there's Sistas Van, I know them!" Do people anticipate you coming and do they know who are? I bet they do, right? 

0:13:46.9 SS: Yes. Yes. So people do know who we are. On social media we have a hashtag Sistas Van link, where people can take a picture with the van and send it to us. We give them a little shout out. But yeah people, we make it a point not to just go to one place, one time, and that we post where we're going every single week, and we want people to know in that community that we're gonna be there, and we do reach out to those community members before we get there. So if there's an organization that has been working in the area that we had, that we wanna connect with, we talk to them before we get there, to be like, "Hey, if you have a bulletin or any newsletters, please share that we'll be there, so that your community knows that we'll be there," and yeah, so now people know, "Okay, Sistas Van's gonna be here, so I'm gonna be there at that time." And so yeah definitely... Denise is the person that's on the van. She definitely has built a deep relationship with so many people on-the-ground, and really building that on-the-ground relationship to have people know where we're gonna be, and also to take stock of what people need so that we can ask for it and get it for those people.

0:15:02.0 LM: Nice, so going out and bringing the stuff is also a process of building relationships with community, and identifying and listening to needs. Love that.

0:15:11.5 SS: And there were in the beginning, and a little bit now, I would say, parents who were sheltered-in-place and weren't able to leave, and moms and families who are immunocompromised and not able to get things for themselves. And so we did one-on-one deliveries as well, to families that couldn't come out. And that people are so grateful for the smallest of things, like a Plan B or pads, or even food, and different things that we have been collecting, and so we put out a form for people to fill out if they are not able to leave their home, and so luckily we were able to do that one-on-one support as well.

0:15:58.0 LM: Nice. I'm just noticing that, I'm remembering earlier you said something about, "I go out" and then you were like, "Well, I mean I go out on the Internet", which I think is such a great example of just how work is shifting, how the ways that we're talking is shifting, and it's just really cool that you all are using social media and partnerships so effectively. So I think that we've talked a little bit about this already, but I just really wanna highlight accessibility is one of the themes of this series, so is there anything else that you wanted to add, about changes that you've made due the pandemic that has made your work even more accessible than it was to begin with? 

0:16:42.8 SS: Yeah, I think definitely being able to provide online spaces more frequently than we did before, and really being able to respond to the times, and not waiting until someone else did it, or waiting until we had time, but really jumping on the opportunities of, you know, community need a space to talk about the debates. And so we created a space for people to talk about the debates, community needs a space to talk about the debates, and so we created a space for people to talk about the debates; community needed space to think about what it means to have reconciliation, and so now there's a whole reconciliation series that's coming out soon. And so really, when it comes to accessibility, one I think, meeting people where they are physically, so with Sistas Van being able to go out and be like, "You don't need to come to us, we'll go to you." And also being able to have, to expand our language capacity to serve Spanish speakers, which is something that for me is super important, and that feels like a way that we've been able to be more accessible.

0:17:53.2 SS: And I think in the... Also being able to say, we need to be able to have more online spaces that also connect people to resources at the end, and a place to point to, it's not just like, "Oh, we're gonna do this workshop and then there's gonna be nothing after," but "We're gonna go to this workshop and then we're gonna receive all these resources that we can use on our own, in our own spaces, in our own communities," that we got our work forward.

0:18:20.7 LM: Nice. And I know that you already have framed your work as meeting evolving needs, but are there, just from the point of our conversation today forward, to the best that you can think about this, are there ways that you think that you won't go back to how you were doing things before? What does the future look like in light of some of the changes and adaptations that you've made? 

0:18:49.3 SS: Yeah, I think the van being able to respond to community and this mutual aid program, and really being able to dive deeper into the solidarity economy, not just in Brooklyn, but in all five boroughs, and being able to connect to the different avenues that exist and the different needs that are still going to last years down the line. That the pandemic just exacerbated those things, they didn't create it. And that we can't go back to not being able to do those things, we can't go back to not responding to community. I think being able to continue to build robust online communities, for example, the Women of Color Solidarity Economy, and really seeing bartering and skills share and sharing supplies and things like that as a way of moving forward. Personally, I'm a cooperator, I call into co-ops. And so again, the solidarity economy is very near and dear to my heart.

0:19:57.8 SS: And what that looks like is being able to share resources and build wealth in all the ways within black communities, and really being able to rethink and redesign the organizational structure to meet the needs of community, and be strategic around what that looks like for not just community, but for staff as well. We live in all different areas of the US and experience different things. Yeah, so what it looks like is, to be constantly evolving and not be still.

0:20:33.8 LM: So that's a great time to ask then about our listeners. Certainly people are listening from all different communities, and what somebody's doing in one community is... We don't wanna necessarily say, do this exact same thing, but certainly we think that a lot of... Especially the process and the intention and the principles and values that you're talking about and that you're bringing to the work are things that people can hopefully replicate. So I just wonder what you think is something that our listeners can do right now in this moment to focus their work on health equity, and then also what's something that they can do longer term to focus on health equity? 

0:21:14.8 SS: Yeah, I would say, in the short-term, that there is... I'm sure that there's mutual aid work happening in every community across the United States, [chuckle] but across the world, to really respond to the time right now, and being involved, that's so different in so many different places, right? And that you can do that right from your phone, right from your home, that you don't have to leave, but really being able to think about if there's a skill that you can share that someone else may need, like sharing that skill, being able to connect with a group, an organization, mutual aid group that may need that skill, being able to support that. Sometimes that's literally just writing emails. If you're a great email writer and you think that you can support in that way, that is literally a skill that is needed in the work. And again, in the short-term, I think being able to realize that we all need each other to get through this, and we can't do it by ourselves, and even if that means, this week, I'm gonna be emotional support for an essential worker. Any time like they need to call me, I'm gonna be available to just hear them out, hear what they have to say, hear the things that they need.

0:22:28.4 SS: And in that, and health equity is also mental health, and what that looks like in the short-term, again, is being able to be there for each other and being able to listen to the things that the community needs. I would say in the longer term, is really thinking about the policies and the direct services that need to exist in order for this work that started and is blossoming within the pandemic to continue. So what does it mean for mutual aid groups to formalize as co-ops, what does it mean for these services that were created? The one that I'm thinking, and that comes to mind is, in New York, we have like a food program that delivers food boxes by the city to different elders and folks that can't leave their home. What does it mean for a policy to be put in place that that's for that to always be the case, or for that always to exist, and what type of advocacy needs to happen for that to be true? And so those things are how people can get involved.

0:23:37.8 LM: I love that. Yeah, do the thing and think about longer term, how you can get policy that makes the thing keep going. Sadé, when you said that there's probably a mutual aid effort going on in communities everywhere, it struck me that that's probably true, and that maybe sometimes they're not called literally mutual aid. So could you talk a little bit about what mutual aid is and what might it look like in a place where it might not literally be under the banner of that language? 

0:24:13.4 SS: Yes. So mutual aid is, I would say, being able to support folks with the things that they need, and that can literally be anything. In our case, the mutual aid that we're doing in New York, for Black Women's Blueprint there's multiple mutual aid groups within just New York, even within the borough of The Bronx, where I am. And mutual aid groups can work on different things. So I'm also part of another initiative that's called Bx ReBirth, yeah, Bx ReBirth and Progress, and we focus on giving parents formula, diapers, and wipes, and that's all we do. And so that mutual aid group is very specific about supporting parents with these very particular things. With Black Women's Blueprint, we focus on everything, so whatever anyone needs is what we're doing. Some other mutual aid groups that may not be under the term mutual aid are... Can be soup kitchens, it can be things like toy drives, it can be clothing drives, some people do like... On the side, they'll have a farmers market, and if you bring something then you get something back; those little book stand that people have sometimes outside of their house, and then you'd be wanting, you take one. That's mutual aid. People need knowledge and ways to decompress.

0:25:46.9 SS: Yeah, so mutual aid can look so many different ways, and a way that this can look within... In your space, if you have a home or if you have an apartment or whatever, is being able to come together with your neighbors and say like, "Hey, we're gonna have an exchange where you're gonna bring these things and I'm gonna bring these things, and we can switch off and are able to trade the things that we both need, but that we don't have to pay money for it. But that... It'll be beneficial to both of us." And being able to center community in that, so everyone can be involved, is really the key to mutual aid. And thinking about what does it mean for folks who are privileged in multiple ways to be showing up for folks who are not privileged in society, and what that means and looks like.

0:26:38.2 LM: Sadé, thank you so much for joining me today. We do invite folks to learn more about Sistas Van and more of the work... About Black Women's Blueprint by checking out the links in the show notes.

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0:27:05.5 LM: Thank you for listening to this episode of Resource on the Go. For more resources of information about preventing sexual assault, visit our website, www.nsvrc.org. You can also get in touch with us by emailing resources@nsvrc.org.