Allow Us to Reintroduce Ourselves: Better to Speak 2.0
Over the past four years, Better to Speak has hosted community dialogue events, produced two podcast seasons, a zine on Black civic engagement, among other community advocacy initiatives for and in partnership with young Black folks in Washington, D.C., Metro-Atlanta, GA, elsewhere in the U.S. and across the Black diaspora.
This past fall/winter, we took a break from most of our forward-facing programs to reflect on what we’ve done, dream up what could be possible for this platform in the future and strategize on how to bridge the gap between the two.
That resulted in the following strategic goals that we will focus on in 2022:
Content – Expanding our editorial content offerings.
Community – Facilitating participation and collaboration.
Capacity – Building internal capacity to promote sustainability.
For more information on our goals and priorities for 2022, check out the first of our quarterly community updates!
What will that look like specifically?
While we have the same mission to amplify the power of storytelling as a tool for social change – this iteration of Better to Speak in particular will bring a year of new projects and revamped programs. Keep reading to learn more!
CONTENT
With the support of a grant from Press On’s Southern Movement Media fund, we plan to expand our editorial content offerings to include published articles from contributing writers, as well as the continuation of Better to Speak: The Podcast.
Stories
Stories is Better to Speak’s editorial platform to amplify young the voices and stories of Black storytellers and changemakers. Our goal is to shift the narrative of the voices discussing important sociopolitical issues and create a living collection of oral histories that include personal narratives in the Black community that center or are documented by young Black folks.
Better to Speak: The Podcast
Better to Speak: The Podcast is a bi-weekly conversation with Kési Felton, founder of Better to Speak, that explores sociopolitical issues affecting Black people through the lens of young Black storytellers and changemakers.
SERVICES
Better to Speak Communications
Better to Speak’s service offerings aim to support young Black community leaders (18-25/30) who are less than three years into their work to, first and foremost, feel confident about their storytelling and content-creation skills. We also hope to inspire and empower our partners to understand the value of effective communications in advocacy work and community-building and develop an effective communications program that amplifies – rather than burdens – their on-the-ground efforts.
PROGRAMS
Our Community Engagement pillar will continue to focus on digital advocacy – including fundraising, education and organizing. The goal of this area of Better to Speak’s programming includes building long-term partnerships, relationships and coalitions as it relates to our focus areas.
Community Events
Conversations and Actions (Events) will gather our community for real-time discussions about relevant sociopolitical issues, as well as about our personal journeys and roles in Black liberation work!
The Right to Read
Formerly known as Better to Speak: The Book Drive, The Right to Read aims to bring awareness to inequities in access to literacy and education for incarcerated Black folks and Black youth in school, and improve access to books for affected communities in Washington, D.C. and Metro-Atlanta, Georgia.
State of the Young Black Advocate campaign
This campaign will bring together all of these programs and goals with community outreach, and take us toward our long-term goals of narrative power-building. Read more about the State of the Young Black Advocate campaign here!
And of course, we can’t accomplish these goals without tapping into the power of our network and community this year – will you join us?
