This week was very conducive in my education on how to advocate for others effectively. At this week’s Learning Session, we had the opportunity to hear from Nick Jones, the Director of Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families, and Tracey Najera, the Executive Director of Children’s Defense Fund Ohio, both dedicated advocates for under-served communities in Ohio. From them, my cohort of fellows and I learned how to advocate for those we are serving in our organizations sincerely and successfully, and what mistakes to avoid that would prevent advocacy projects from being lucrative to their goal. For example, we learned that interaction and gaining an understanding of situations directly from those who are being negatively impacted in their health or ability to live safely and with opportunity for success based on their environment is imperative. Communicating with people who you are trying to serve will lead to better results because you can hear what actions need to be taken to mitigate issues that are occurring from those who are actually experiencing these issues. We were taught from experts that we need to have ambition and intention in our work, along with working to serve others in disparate situations, because if you are not fully committed then you cannot be prosperous in your work as an advocate.

At Ohio Humanities, I also have been been working on a project whose goal is to advocate for education about segregation that is ingrained in our country’s history and continues to have an impact on our society as well as implications for how racial inequalities are approached today. In Hillsboro, Ohio, in the 1950s, a group of black mothers routinely took their children daily to march for over a year to the city’s “white” elementary school after the “black” elementary school was burned down with the goal of their children being admitted and integrated. Their dedication to their children’s education played a large role in the Midwest during the civil rights movement after Brown v. Board of Education. Ohio Humanities is advocating for the courage and devotion of these mothers through a short documentary that is being screened at an event in September, for which I have been given the space for a large role in the planning of, something I am incredibly grateful for.