Throughout the country there are many organizations having to make tough decisions based on the current health crisis. COVID-19 pandemic has made it challenging for organizations, like the NB3 Foundation, who bring youth and community partners together for programming and strengthening community knowledge. We do our best work when we are together with our youth and community partners, so we knew finding safe and engaging ways to stay connected is a top priority.

One of our initiatives, the Native Youth on the Move (NYM) project – a partnership with the Nike N7 Fund – aims to increase the number of Native American youth (ages 7-18) participating in play, physical activity and sports, has used this time to “pivot” to a virtual stage.

Six Albuquerque-based organizations, and two pueblo communities, make up the NYM Community Team. Before the pandemic, the NYM Community Team met on a monthly basis to check-in, learn new skills and plan future collaborations. Being that we could no longer have in-person gatherings we pivoted to an online schedule using “Cyber Huddles.”

The goal of the NYM Cyber Huddles are still the same as the in-person gatherings — share, learn, and have fun! With the help of our community partners, such as New Mexico Health Equity Partnership, we are able to provide a quality online experience that provides Indigenous evaluation, communication and virtual programming tools/ideas.

One of the tools that was recently offered by Mabel Gonzalez, of Mavel Photography, was “Photovoice.” Photovoice is a Community Based Participatory Research (action research) methodology. Photovoice provides the opportunity for community members, that are often excluded from decision making processes, to creatively document their voices and vision about their lives, community and concerns. It ignites interest about important topics that are relevant within a community and allows a community to express themselves through photography.

The final Photovoice presentations were captured in this illustration by Taslim van Hattum, who is a graphic recording specialist, based in Northern New Mexico. Each Native Youth on the Move community partner took to the virtual stage to share a photo that tells the story of their work, vision, community and concerns. It was an uplifting, motivating and captivating celebration, and this illustration beautifully captures the passion and extraordinary work our community partners are doing to keep Native youth healthy and active.

Being able to provide a space for community partners to continue to share their progress and ideas means a lot to us at the NB3 Foundation. We miss our in-person time together with everyone, but we will continue to provide a fun, active, and engaging virtual experience for all of our youth participants and community partners.

 

On July 16, 2020, the NB3 Foundation hosted a virtual Visiting Relatives Gathering with seven Community Partners from New Mexico as well as two guest speakers, Celena McCray and Waylon Pahona Jr. The gathering created a space for our relatives to share their organization’s “pivoting” during COVID-19.

Each organization or tribe, showed a short presentation about the steps they took to continue their activities. The conversations were inspirational and you could hear the strength it took to embrace the challenges we face today. Stories included shift from in-person programming to virtual activity meet ups. Resources and ideas were shared amongst the group especially using social media and technology to effectively engage their youth and communities.

This word cloud above is a depiction of the positive themes and ideas that came about during the Virtual Visiting Relatives conversation with community partners: Keres Children’s Learning Center, Zuni Youth Enrichment Project, Tamaya Youth and Wellness Center, Pueblo of Laguna, Running Medicine from Native Health Initiative , Spirit of Hoops with Mountain Chief Institute , and NB3FIT.  All the community partners came together to learn from one another about the pivoting that is happening during this pandemic in a positive way to keep moving their work.

 

Special thanks to guest speakers:

 

Celena McCray, is a tribal member of the Navajo Nation and her clans are the Bitter Water People born for the Mountain Cove People. She serves as the THRIVE (Tribal Health: Reaching out InVolves Everyone) suicide prevention project & WA DOH Parenting Teens – Project Coordinator at NW Tribal Epidemiology Center with the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. She provides suicide prevention training, technical assistance, and develops culturally appropriate media campaigns and resources related to suicide prevention. Celena assists adolescent health project staff with www.wernative.org, the national multimedia health resource for Native teens and young adults. She also wrapped up her Masters in Public Health studies this year at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health in Portland, OR.

Waylon Pahona Jr. is Hopi & Tewa/ Maricopa grew up on the Hopi Reservation. He spent more than ten years within the Gila River Indian Community employed by WIA (Workforce Investment Act), as a Youth Coordinator for five years and five years with Gila River Health Care as a Lead Staff Trainer. Waylon is well known for transforming his life and being the founder/creator of Healthy Active Natives (HAN’s). The HAN’s social networking group on Facebook currently has over 75,000 HAN members nationally and internationally. Waylon also received the Healthy Innovation award by IHS Indian Health Services for his social media group and he is also an Ambassador for Tanka Bar jerky and currently the Wellness Director of the Fort Mojave Tribe.