Hello and welcome to the year's final issue of the YWU's newsletter.

It's hard to believe that 2008 is practically at its end and that 2009 is no longer far off in the horizon. This year has been a busy year for YWU and full of many adjustments. We have started, reinvented and accomplished much this year. This year we as an organization have begun the long process of five year planning as well as hired and trained a new staff person (me). We have also introduced two new programs, the Panocha Pláticas and a collaborative project with Kalpuli Izkalli called the Promotora Apprenticeship. Alongside the new programs we continue our work with our on-going programs and campaigns. This year has been a challenge, but we know that the programs and campaigns YWU has created have enriched the lives of our membership and staff by allowing us to share our stories as well as learn about our bodies and sexualities. We hope that the positive change within our lives will be reflected in our communities.

In this issue we will be recapping YWU's accomplishments as well as our challenges in 2008.

As the year finds its way to its end, may you have a joyous Holiday and a Happy New Year!!!
Dominique Pierson
Communications and Office Coordinator

PS. For the event of the yearly wrap up we decided to do something a little different. Some of you will be receiving this eNew's, Zine Style. If you desire to receive a hard copy of this eNews in all of its printed glory email me your mailing address (at dompierson@gmail.com) and we will make sure to snail mail it to you.

The Year '08 with Circle of Stregth

Winter/Spring '08
On January 23rd Circle of Strength (COS) was presented with the "Pass the Torch" award by Naral New Mexico in honor of our organizing efforts around Sex Education. COS member Kirbie Platero gave the following acceptance speech:
"By accepting this award, me and my sisters from Young Women United are celebrating the power of choice. Our choice as women. Not only the choice of abortion or birth control. But the choice of motherhood as part of my survival. For I have been well educated in these particular issues of sexual health, I have made the choice at 17 years old to carry out my pregnancy and proceed with motherhood at a young age. The fact of this being my choice to decide when to have a baby is the celebration of a woman's choice. So on behalf of young Women United we would like to accept this award and say thank you."

Women's Day Fashion Show
Under the instruction of Seamstress Virginia Hampton, COS dedicated January through March to learning how to sew. We made pillows and handbags, as well as created our own outfits for our first ever Fashion Show in celebration of International Women's day on March 8, 2008. We showcased nine models in fabulous clothes handmade by our very own COS members and YWU staff. We had a "make your own t-shirt" corner with our members assisting peeps in designing their very own YWU t-shirt. We also screened "No!," a documentary about Rape. Much love to Out Ch'Yonda for hosting this event!

Summer '08
COS weekly meetings included fried bread making, a Nia (a form of martial arts dance) lesson, Healthy Eating teen focus group, a tour of Enlace Comunitario, and political education and consciousness raising workshops, gathering Sex Ed surveys, amongst other activities.

We prepped for Albuquerque Pride by making pussy pops and t-shirts. YWU members loved attending pride, gathering surveys and reaching out about our anti-violence message.

COS Graduates
COS members Destiny, Shavon, and Ife graduated. Congratz women!!!

Fall '08
Awesome Amy Biehl Volunteer
We started off the fall with a fabulous new addition to our office. Jazmin is volunteering 100 community hours for her senior project at Amy Beihl High School and has chosen to fulfill her hours at YWU. She has been awesome at collecting surveys. She also created this years Sister Fire program.

Throughout the fall COS members have attended Anti-Violence Against Women meetings, YWU's healthcare trainings, helped plan Sister Fire '08, and attended UNM's el Centro de la Raza's Dia de Muertos celebration.

Sex Ed Sessions by YWU
In 2008 we provided thorough and medically accurate sex Ed sessions at: Nuestros Valores charter school, Truman Middle school, the Teen Parent Residential Home, John Adams middle school, Vision Quest Treatment Facility, and Albuquerque Rape Crisis Center's Palabra Project, amongst others.

On November 6, 2008 Young Women United's Circle Of Strength along with allies attended APS's "Celebrate the Eight "community discussions hosted by the new Superintendent, Winston Brooke at Valley High.

We split ourselves into groups and were able to comment on Student Based Health Centers, implementing the PED standards and benchmarks for health education, standardized curricula, and equal access into the schools.

The meeting ended with an open mic for participants to ask questions to the Superintendent. We requested the mic and asked "As superintendent what type of sexuality education do you support?" The superintendent replied that he is a supporter of Abstinence education, and would like to know more about what "abstinence plus" education looks like. He stated he is not in support of distributing condoms in schools. We followed up with asking if he was familiar with the New Mexico state Standards and Benchmarks for Health Education, and his answer was "no!" We suggested he familiarize himself and requested a meeting with him to discuss the implementation of the standards and benchmarks.

To check out the audio of this encounter, visit YWU's You Tube page at www.youtube.com/youngwomenunited.

Any ideas, questions, comments or concerns - shoot us an email at amayahuel@hotmail.com or drop by one of our meetings any Thursday afternoon between 4-6pm!

YWU's Organizational Shift Toward Sustainability and Connectedness!

YWU members recognized that as we organize in our communities for the changes we see needed, we must also address the healing of ourselves and our communities in this process. We are all humans connected to each other, to the earth, to creation: we decided to be more mindful of the ways we work in our communities. We look toward the social movements that we are proud of and see that successful social movements have been based in the spirit of humanity. To incorporate this shift in 08, our annual summer training institute was titled, "Real Revolution has Spirit" we came together to share, experience and build the way we organize and work with spirit as our base. We built our community altar and shared our grounding and healing practices with over 30 participants.

Hispanics in Philanthropy has granted Young Women United a three year grant to build a Sustainability Plan. YWU has contracted Spirit In Motion, a project of the Movement Strategy Center to help facilitate us through this process because of their model that supports a balanced approach to creating sustainable organizational cultures that reflect the world we are trying to create. Our goal is to make an organizational shift that challenges state power and builds leadership among young women of color equipped with strategies and tactics that move with the spirit, love and determination needed to improve the health and healing of our communities.

Revolutionary Motherhood at YWUand Across the Country!

We are Revolutionary Mamas of Color, working collectively to raise our children, and to create the vision of how we want birthing, parenting and caretaking to be in a more just and loving world.
Our vision and practice of parenting is not just about biological mothers but includes aunties, sistas, grandmas, tias, and other close community members who share in the often undervalued and invisible work of caretaking and parenting.

We're also challenging the way our current society and government treats caretakers, especially poor and working class mothers of color who are unsupported, scrutinized and policed when trying to raise our families. We see this work as a way to challenge the patriarchal and isolating model of nuclear family units AND as a way of creating social justice for everyone because a society is only as just as how it treats its children and its elders.

Currently we are made up of members from Young Women United in Albuquerque, NM and members of Mamas of Color Rising in Austin, TX with other individual mamas of color from around the country.

We have collectively created a 2 session workshop titled Revolutionary Motherhood. The workshop invites participants to join in a conversation about the institutionalized race and class privileges in motherhood followed by a visioning workshop around the ways revolutionary mothering can transform our communities for the better. Beginning with the treatment of pregnancy as a social ill for low-income women and women of color, the policing of motherhood is a crucial part of the school to prison pipeline. Mothers engaged with state services (ie: Medicaid, Food Stamps, WIC, subsidized childcare, etc.) are scrutinized, pathologized, and policed in ways that other parents never experience; this workshop lays out how the prison pipeline can actually begin in the womb.

Revolutionary mothering happens at a personal and political level; we are excited to be part of dialog around the intersection of revolutionary motherhood and the Prison Industrial Complex abolition movement.

We have also combined our personal experiences and created an awesome Revolutionary Motherhood Zine! Join us by sharing your stories about:

• resistance to the systems that criminalize poor and working class families of color AND
  
• your creative and revolutionary birthing and parenting practices, both individual and collective.

If you are doing similar work, want to join us in these projects, or if you would like to receive a copy (for a donation of $3 - $5) of the Zine call 505.831.8930 or email revolutinarymamas@gmail.com.

Women of Color: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Community

A collaborative project of YWU and Kalpulli Izkalli: The Promotora Apprenticeship

Women of color have long been kept in ignorance about the workings of our own bodies especially when it comes to our own reproductive systems. We have also been denied the right to complete healthcare; this includes the right to access and knowledge of alternative and traditional medicine. For these reasons YWU and Kalpulli Izkalli have joined resources and expertise to create the Promotoras Tradicionales Apprenticeship Program for young women of color ages 13 to 35. The purpose of the program is to share knowledge about self and communal healing through the use traditional medicine.

The first part of the program was dedicated to Traditional medicine. During this part of the apprenticeship, information and knowledge was exchanged in "Knowledge Sharing's" as well as hands on experience obtained by participation in events hosted by Kalpulli Izkalli which included Quarterly community clinics and the annual Encuentro De Medicina Tradicional (Encounter with Traditional Medicine). Knowledge Sharing's included dialogue and teachings on; the herstory of Coyolxaqui, the four elements, reproductive justice, and the female reproductive system. We apprentices also learned how to make herbal first aid kits, gardening, tincturing, and herbal soap making.

The last phase of the apprenticeship program was dedicated to the Promotoras del Parto Natural training (promoters of natural birth). Together with Nandi Hill, midwife assistant we built a six week course that focused on natural and healthy options for prenatal care, birthing, post partum, and baby care. The curriculum was as followed: 

• History of midwives in New Mexico - the viewing of the documentary "El Espiritu de la Partera."
  
• "Revolutionary Motherhood" workshop - used improvised role plays to focus on the differences of hospital and home birthing.
  
• Prenatal I - The development of a normal pregnancy, common discomforts and natural suggested cures. 
  
• Prenatal II - Nutrition and preparing physically, emotionally and spiritually for the birthing.
  
• Birthing- The process of a normal birth and how to support a client.
  
• Post Partum I - The normal post partum process for the mom and child, breast feeding.
  
• Post Partum II - The challenges that might arise for the mom, baby and family, Nutrition, and Traditional post partum healing.
  
• Finale: Ceremony and blessing of Promotoras del Parto Natural.

If you are interested in bringing traditional medicine and/or childbirth back to women of color by participating in next years Promotora Apprenticeship contact Andrea Garza at 505.831.8930 or email amayahuel@hotmail.com. 

Sister Fire 2008

YWU celebrated our 5th year of holding Sister Fire, Burque's annual all women of color performing arts event. This fifth year meant a lot to us, we never imagined five years ago that Sister Fire would be such a hit, year after year! Each year it shows us that people in Albuquerque support women of color organizing for change and that women of color artists are AMAZING and can pack a house! This year Sister Fire took a bit of a hit as Obama's campaign rolled into Albuquerque on the same day and same time as our event. We acknowledge the importance of him being here and see it as a small sacrifice for the greater good. We still had a great turn out considering the competition. And as always, had a fierce performance that showcased fabulous females of color and brought awareness to several issues that impact our communities. See ya next year!