January RSJ Spotlight | YW Community Engagement Team

Racial & Social Justice Spotlight Series

Each month, YWCA Spokane’s Equity Coordinator spotlights an organization or individual in our community that is aligned with our mission so we can highlight the work they do to create real and lasting change for a more equitable Spokane.

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January Spotlight

YWCA Spokane’s Community Engagement Department | Lizbeth Reyes (Prevention Coordinator), Lara Estaris (Equity Coordinator), Jemma Riedel-Johnson (Community Engagement Coordinator)

To start off 2024, I convinced my colleagues, Liz and Jemma, to get in front of a camera with me and reflect on how we’ve navigated the formation of our brand new Community Engagement department at YWCA Spokane (we just celebrated our second birthday!) and our experiences as women of color working in a predominantly white community and at a predominantly white agency. I’m grateful for our time together and the surprisingly deep conversations we’ve had over the past couple years. It’s empowering to be in conversation and community with other women of color and I believe everyone benefits by bearing witness to these moments in time.

Key takeaways:

• Our team has a collective understanding and empathy for each other, in and outside of work. Our personalities are very different but we’re able to hold a unified vision and work well together towards our goals. Our team is an example of how leadership and collaboration can look vs. society’s expectations of professionalism and workplace attire.
• Our supervisor, Erica, continually reminds us of our contributions and helps us work through our doubts, reinforces our confidence and capability in our respective roles.
• Whether or not in the presence of white counterparts, we always gauge if people take us seriously, perceive us as lazy or lacking of knowledge as younger women of color that don’t always perpetuate professional stereotypes.
• Children of color who grew up in US still don’t feel like they belong even though it’s the only place they’ve ever known.
• There is a cost when staff of color speak up, make requests, etc.

“Being aware of the successes and how different my journey has been than what my parents’ has been. And acknowledging that, by going to college as a first generation Latina, I am breaking generational cycles and changing the narrative for generations that follow me. That has allowed me to show up in spaces, owning them and being able to be more proud and confident in those spaces.” – Liz Reyes, YWCA Prevention Coordinator

“It’s not a destination I’m at, but a journey towards. If you can belong to yourself and find belonging internally, that assuredness, that resoluteness, then you will belong everywhere you go.” – Jemma Riedel-Johnson,
YWCA Community Engagement Coordinator

About YWCA Spokane’s Community Engagement Department

Founded in 2022, YWCA Spokane’s Community Engagement Department was created to help promote community collaboration and action that furthers the mission of the agency. The department helped to centralize and expand the agency’s outreach and partnership efforts. The efforts of this team help to prevent future harm in our community through awareness, education, and prevention efforts centered around the intersections of inequity, poverty, and intimate partner domestic violence (IPDV).

View the Community Engagement’s 2023 Impact Report here.

Check out YWCA Spokane’s recent RSJ Spotlights

• JANUARY | 2023 Washington Legislative Session
• FEBRUARY | If You Could Save Just One
• MARCH | Latrice Williams
• APRIL | Tracy Poindexter-Canton
• MAY | Naghmana Sherazi
• JUNE | Mujeres in Action
• JULY | INDEx
• AUGUST | Olivia Evans
• SEPTEMBER | Justice Forral
• OCTOBER | Inga N. Laurent
• NOVEMBER | Tamika LaMere

Find all past RSJ Spotlights here. If you or someone you know should have their advocacy work highlighted through the RSJ Spotlight series, please email equity@ywcaspokane.org.