Black Womens Blueprint, Inc.

Black Women’s Blueprint’s (BWB) Goal is to 1) provide healing programs, 2) advocacy and 3) prevention-education curricula that holistically addresses sexual violence, using an approach rooted in historical, grassroots, anti-oppression and policy work.

For nearly a decade, programs at Black Women’s Blueprint has focused on sexual-violence prevention, training, advocacy, and healing justice in partnership with sexual assault survivors across a variety of identities. Since its launch, Black Women’s Blueprint has focused on critical interventions across African diasporic communities of the U.S. and abroad. The organization is the convener of the first Black Women’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Sexual Violence to occur in the United States. The human rights policy advocacy by Black Women’s Blueprint has focused on the United Nations and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), The Committee on the Convention Against Torture (CAT), and localized efforts to implement the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). As part of a national task force on gender-violence and a think tank to end racism and racial capitalism, the organization engages legislators, other advocacy networks, feminist and human rights entities in order to center the needs of Black women and girls.

1) Sustain our onsite trauma healing and counseling services directly engaging survivors as young as age fourteen through senior citizenship annually, who are saying #MeToo, who are seeking crisis intervention, sustained healing, and are often asking after disclosure: “what now”; “how do I repair, restore my own body to myself; how do I heal?”

2) Respond to a community of sexual assault prevention and reproductive healthcare practitioners as well as concerned community members across the City, with Sistas Van mobile healing unit to address the intra-community, intergenerational sexual assault, sexual abuse, and persistent trauma experienced by survivors within a myriad of settings including: in their homes, community streets, reproductive healthcare settings, workplace, and their universities.

3) Enable a framework of train the trainer modules, sharing our healing model with 120 doulas and birth-workers seizing upon, and working to correct what BWB interprets as a vacuum in the contemporary conversations about sexual violence, its intersection with reproductive health, and how this violence negatively impacts maternal outcomes. Specifically, BWB’s technical assistance and training will expand Community Survival Clinics training doulas who work with survivors of sexual violence, to build their skill-skets and strategies, and a referral network to trauma counselors throughout the city when survivors are triggered or when they encounter trauma within medical facilities, hospitals, labor and delivery wards, exam and c-section operating tables.

Furthermore: The organization seeks to bolster its flagship initiative, the Institute for Gender and Culture (IGC) is a critical intervention in the anti-violence, reproductive justice and other social justice movement. The IGC delivers prevention education and intervention curricula based on an understanding of the complex interplay between the individual, relational, social, cultural, environmental, historical and persistent systemic factors that influence the spectrum of discrimination, oppression and violence that impact people’s lives. Using proven effective pedagogy and methodologies, that include small group and large classroom learning, online methods, art and street theater and other innovative learning and teaching methods.

Black Women’s Blueprint staff and Directors possess over 18 years of providing sexual assault services in communities of color, and specifically to victims of Black/African American victims and survivors of sexual assault. Founded in 2008 and launched in 2010, Black Women’s Blueprint has reached over 16,000 community members via museum, arts and educational materials to address the spectrum of sexual violence against women and girls in Black communities. Our technical assistance and training has resulted in 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the nation, including 300 faculty and students annually. The organization itself has over 10 years of experience addressing sexual assault in Black communities of New York City within a human rights framework and via an anti-oppression lens. We continue to partner with local communities, faith based leaders, national agencies, policymakers, advocates and community-based organizations to strengthen efforts to address issues of critical concern to Black women who are victims of or at risk for sexual assault. The organization has the programmatic, managerial, and financial capability to carry out the proposed program. With numerous donors and foundation grants, The Organization is highly competent in budgeting, developing project work plans and time lines, hiring, supervising, and retaining staff; and evaluating and documenting results. The Organization has a strong track record in locating and providing quality services to victims of sexual assault. The Organization has its own Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual, and a separate Fiscal Policies and Procedures manual. To ensure that our programs run effectively, we provide extensive staff training, weekly case consultation, staff meetings, and supervision. In addition, our Program policy and procedure manual is used as a guide to ensure that appropriate and coordinated services are provided to victims and their children living with physical, sexual, financial, verbal and emotional, spiritual and other forms of oppression. The Organization thus has an infrastructure that fully supports the proposed program, highly-qualified and dedicated staff, long-time experience in providing sexual assault services to our target population, an array of culturally- and linguistically-competent services to which program participants will have access, and extensive linkages with other relevant service providers. Our success is demonstrated by our continual ability to meet our performance goals and the first-rate evaluations, contract renewals, grants, and honors we receive. The Organization members, including Co-Directors have received many honors for service to New York's immigrant women including a fellowship from the Soros Foundation/Open Society Institute, Proclamations from the NYC Council, a Union Square Award, an Emigrant Award, and a Local Hero Award.

BWB’s additional accomplishments include:

As a Technical Assistance and Training (TA) Provider for the Office on Violence Against Women, BWB has also worked with students, staff, and faculty of color at 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the country to end rape on campus, providing direct technical support and training using the only national culturally-specific broad- based primary prevention and bystander intervention program to be recognized by the CDC. Black Women’s Blueprint is also proud to democratize an equitable political action and prevention curriculum via our Institute for Gender and Cultural Competency, enlisting a national roster of illustrious Black feminist faculty to deliver workshops and other trainings to the public, including around New York City.

Active, direct, multi-approach intervention with, by and for survivors of sexual assault using critical-race and gender justice lens.

Counseling services tailored for Black victims and a variety of culturally relevant services, including healing circles, sister circles that serve over 200 girls, women, femmes and non-binary survivors per year.

Creative healing strategies such as quilting, story-telling, theater, song and African dance, reaching over 450 individuals a year.

Trainings in racial and gender justice through our Liberatory Healing Model which was intentionally designed with a cultural and gender lens.

Outreach and public education to over 3000 individuals at colleges and community sites as well as on-site at its offices specifically on the cultural and linguistic factors for Black Survivors of sexual violence.

Innovation in critical participatory research, reporting, culturally and linguistically specific curricula and training programs for community organizations, advocacy groups, and other entities and the organization has trained over 200 entities per month using these gender-violence, consent, community organizing, anti-rape advocacy curricula.

Deployment of strategies unique to the field of anti-violence and sexual assault service delivery, such as a community mobile healing unit, Sistas Van.

Coalition building across movements, across sectors, geography and ethnicity toward the development of non-profit solidarity economies or feminist economies to ultimately build women’s political power.

Provision of on-going national technical assistance in the form of quarterly-calls, one-on-one visits and review of any expansion of its model, at historically black colleges and mainstream universities, community based organizations, city institutions and public school education setting and functions as a prevention resource in the nation as well as several jurisdictions, state department of health and other agencies.

Deployment of sophisticated social media programming to spark unpopular conversations, unpack racialized/sexualized ideologies that perpetuate violence.