Category Archives: Article

WOC has enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to communicate with our audience and community through a variety of social media platforms this year. We would like to take this moment to spotlight one post each month of the year that received high levels of engagement from our followers. We hope you enjoy reading this special year-in-review as much as we enjoyed putting it together!

January 2022

Women of Colors has an exciting update! As you may know, WOC received a $200,000 discovery grant from Michigan State Endowment in 2021. The grant award will allow WOC to discover whether and how African Americans are receiving follow-up healthcare for behavioral health needs! Behavioral health includes both substance use and mental health disorders. Check out our website to learn more about this project.

February 2022

Collaboration is the key! “Each agency has their own expertise,” says Evelyn McGovern, WOC President and Cofounder. “Sometimes we aren’t sure how best to move forward when solving a community problem, and our partnerships are a great resource to help us answer a lot of questions.” Visit our website to learn how WOC is discovering barriers to behavioral health services through an award from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund.

March 2022

We asked some of our members, “What does Women of Colors mean to YOU?” Here’s what Kelcei Schultz, Mentor for Students and Future Technology, had to share! “I was one of the fastest to complete [WOC’s science and technology] programs. I love it. They told me that I can do whatever I want to do. Now I am planning bigger and better things for the future. I want to go into computer science or engineering because I love technology. [The Students and Future Technology program] has opened my eyes. Not many girls know about this or do it. It improves your chances for scholarships and getting into colleges and other opportunities.”

April 2022

Each of us can change ourselves, our community, and our world in powerful ways! Even if you’re not sure where or how to start, Women of Colors wants you to know that YOU can make a difference TODAY.

Try this: Join a club or community organization. Boost your productivity and happiness by bonding with like-minded people over a shared passion or cause!

May 2022

We asked some of our members, “What does Women of Colors mean to YOU?” Here’s what Leslie Eschenbacher, Prevention Specialist for the WOC Prevention Team, had to share! “We will train a class of two or three if they are interested and could benefit from the program. Even being able to help one person is better than helping none. I hope that after [participants] leave the trainings, they take everything they have learned and use it to benefit themselves. I hope they look for other resources that will help them become a productive part of their family and community.”

June 2022

Each of us can change ourselves, our community, and our world in powerful ways! Even if you’re not sure where or how to start, Women of Colors wants you to know that YOU can make a difference TODAY.

Try this: Help a senior citizen. Assist a senior citizen in your community with chores in their home or yard that are difficult for them to do. If they are a long-time resident of your community, ask them to share their memories of what your city was like in the past!

July 2022

Each of us can change ourselves, our community, and our world in powerful ways! Even if you’re not sure where or how to start, Women of Colors wants you to know that YOU can make a difference TODAY.

Try this: Take good care of your physical and mental health so that you can take better care of others! Build a life where you can thrive physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

August 2022

At Women of Colors …
We celebrate the strength of diversity.
We develop relationships to overcome barriers.
We foster community through storytelling.
We teach skills for wellness and a healthy, happy lifestyle.
We give kids and teens a voice.
We help students develop skills and confidence.
We build a better community.
We acknowledge that it takes community to make a difference.
We are here for our community.
Read the full story here: https://womenofcolors.org/2022/08/11/at-woc/

September 2022

Did you know that WOC has a prevention program that encourages individuals to make low-risk choices? Our prevention specialists have made a positive difference in the lives of many people and have worked with a wide variety of organizations, from churches to middle and high schools to homeless shelters. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a special series of social media posts highlighting the efforts and accomplishments of the WOC Prevention Team!

October 2022

Lynn Brummell-Presley is an active member of the WOC Prevention Team. Ever since her parents and siblings migrated to Saginaw, Michigan, from Guyana, South America, Lynn immediately began her involvement with working, volunteering, and knowing the community in which she was about to live. “I love serving and helping the people of my community,” she says. “[WOC Prevention] is reaching thousands of viewers of all types through virtual and face-to-face programming.”

November 2022

WOC is all about helping people and addressing barriers in the community!

“At WOC, we’re always reaching out to individuals who are hurting, who have barriers that need to be addressed in the community – and we’re trying to find out the answers of why we have systemic problems that cause all the disparities of homelessness, mental health, and substance abuse. We try to address every issue that we can, and if we can’t figure it out, we try to find out who does have the answers so that this person or organization can help us help people.” —Evelyn McGovern, President and Cofounder

December 2022

Service is central to the reason that WOC was founded, and to this day, our values have centered around helping others. From putting together after-school programs to engage youth in positive and productive learning experiences, to administering substance abuse prevention programs, to holding listening sessions to receive input from people who are impacted by disparities, over the years we have served many sectors of our community and are always looking for opportunities to serve more people, more effectively.

Note: WOC currently has an active presence on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn in addition to our posts here on the WOC website. If you are not yet following us, we welcome you to do so to stay informed about events in our organization and to follow along with our journey!

With the start of 2023 upon us, it is the perfect time to await the next phase of our journey as an organization—and as a community—with excitement and hope.

WOC encourages you to take a moment to reflect and consider:

1. In what ways did I serve others this year? What are my dreams, goals, and plans to continue or build upon this work in 2023?
2. Who am I called to help or serve?
3. What mission am I called to fulfill?
4. Where would I like to be next year at this time? Who would I like to be?
5. What activities did I participate in that furthered my personal mission and/or the mission of my organization?
6. What steps can I take to achieve my long-term goals for positive change in my life and in the lives of others?
7. What would I like to see change in my community this coming year? How can I make a difference and be the difference?
8. Who or what inspires me to reach my full potential as a leader, volunteer, and/or community member? How can I surround myself with more inspiration?
9. What are my strengths, and how can I leverage them to be a blessing to others? How can I put my gifts and talents to good use for my community?
10. What are my values? What steps might I take to live in closer alignment with my values?

WOC wishes you a very happy New Year! Thank you for all of your encouragement and support of our work throughout 2022!

The end of the year is a great time to reflect on what matters most. For WOC, something that matters deeply to our leaders and volunteers is that we practice our values in all that we do and offer within the community.

Diversity – Women of Colors has an “s” on the end because we welcome people of all colors. We celebrate diversity as a strength and enjoy working together to achieve a common goal. Being inclusive and welcoming to all people is important to us and reflective in the programs we offer and the messaging we hope to share within and beyond our community.

Service – Service is central to the reason that WOC was founded, and to this day, our values have centered around helping others. From putting together after-school programs to engage youth in positive and productive learning experiences, to administering substance abuse prevention programs, to holding listening sessions to receive input from people who are impacted by disparities, over the years we have served many sectors of our community and are always looking for opportunities to serve more people, more effectively.

Community – We take a great deal of satisfaction in bringing our community together through events, forums, and initiatives. Reaching out through both in-person and virtual events has enabled us to expand our reach and grow our impact in the region. We understand that our organization is able to thrive only because of the incredible level of community support we receive, and we are also humbled to know that many of our initiatives support a thriving community. We bring people from various backgrounds and with various life experiences together to accomplish more as a group than any one of us could do alone.

Curiosity – Curiosity and problem solving go hand in hand. At WOC, we are solution-driven and motivated by the difference between what our community is and what it could be. We are constantly seeking deeper awareness and understanding of the needs in our community and service region, as well as potential strategies for addressing those needs. We educate ourselves on barriers that people in our community may be facing, especially at the systemic level, and look for ways that we can eliminate them, either as an organization or in collaboration with other organizations.

Collaboration – There are many agencies in the Great Lakes Bay Region that are doing great things for the community, and by working with them, we can impact more people. We focus on extending the message of other organizations and are interested in complementing rather than duplicating their services. In many instances, WOC’s role in collaborations has been connecting the dots and helping consumers and community members find out where and how to access services that other agencies provide or promote.

WOC invites you to take this opportunity to reflect on what values matter most to you, and to consider joining some of our efforts and initiatives in the Great Lakes Bay Region. Happy holidays!

Did you know that Women of Colors has an active social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn? Social media is a great tool for engaging with our community and the people we serve. At WOC, one of our key values is collaboration, so today we are sharing a variety of social media marketing ideas that are specific to nonprofits and community organizations. Whether you work for another nonprofit organization in the Great Lakes Bay Region or you are simply eager to learn where and how you can spread the word about community initiatives, we hope you find this article helpful!

Read on for our best social media content ideas:

• Highlight a person who has contributed to or benefitted from your organization’s activities and initiatives. Humanize your organization and its volunteers by creating a staff highlight or leader profile on social media.
• Highlight an annual or recurring event sponsored by your organization. Pick an important event to feature in detail on your website. Consider choosing an event that is charitable or community-oriented in nature.
• Share ideas for promoting positive change in and across communities. Give people practical tips for living out your organization’s mission statement.
• Share tools and techniques for approaching a problem or challenge that your organization has navigated successfully. For example, if your staff learned strategies for adapting programs and operations during the pandemic, sharing your ideas with similar nonprofits has the potential to drive collaboration in the future.
• Provide an overview of your organization in the past, present, and future. Include history, activities, and goals in your discussion.
• Create a roundup of events in the community. Compile a list of community-oriented or family-friendly events in your service region, including your organization’s events and events sponsored by similar organizations.
• Share information resources with individuals and families. Link to articles, websites, and videos that complement your organization’s niche.
• Create bite-sized pieces from longer conversations. If your organization has already created a relevant piece of long-form content, consider summarizing or repurposing it for social media. Provide a link to the original article or video.
• Use numerical data to show your impact. Provide statistics about a social issue side by side with numerical data about what your organization and/or other community agencies are doing to mitigate or resolve the issue.
• Engage followers with quizzes and polls. Create a quiz about a social issue impacting your service region so that people can test their understanding of it. Alternatively, create a more “fun” poll based on trivia about your organization.
• Post quick lessons from any trainings, toolkits, or workshops your organization provides. Give people practical tips for improving their lives and communities.
• Partner with similar organizations. Create a post highlighting like-minded nonprofits in and around your service region in order to give your followers additional resources and build goodwill with current or potential partners.
• Encourage support from participants. List practical ways your supporters can help your organization thrive, such as by taking advantage of volunteer opportunities or using a special hashtag on social media.
• Display progress toward goals. Announce long-term goals for donations, hours volunteered, social media engagement, etc. Share a progress bar that gives people an idea of when/how you will reach an exciting benchmark.
• Describe how nonprofits can use social media for community connection. Share what you have learned from creating social media campaigns to increase your followers and engagement on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social networking platforms in order to help like-minded nonprofits achieve similar results.

At Women of Colors, we celebrate the strength of diversity. The forum Time to Have a Conversation helps people resist systematic racism and learn more about it by listening to experts and those who have experienced it. Our speakers send a message of working together between and among races, for we are more similar than different.

At Women of Colors, we develop relationships to overcome barriers. WOC has led initiatives that serve at-risk youth ages 6–18 with after-school programming. These students have worked with mentors, learned coping skills, and gotten involved in community-building activities. If we want to reach children and teens, we need to first develop positive relationships with them.

At Women of Colors, we foster community through storytelling. The forum How I Overcame encourages an open dialogue among women of colors who are passionate about overcoming challenges as a community. Our panelists help others by telling stories of what and how they overcame.

At Women of Colors, we teach skills for wellness and a healthy, happy lifestyle. From December 2019 to February 2020, we administered the Prime for Life program to youth in juvenile detention, measuring their understanding of prevention strategies before and after completing the training. Our participants saw an increase in average test score from 57% to 67%.

At Women of Colors, we give kids and teens a voice. The event Your Voice Your Choice involves young people as not only beneficiaries but ambassadors of WOC’s mission to give back to the Saginaw community. Our youth consortium plans fun, productive workshops for other middle and high school students.

At Women of Colors, we help students develop skills and confidence. WOC has offered an after-school program called Students and Future Technology (SaFT). Students from second to twelfth grade learn about robotics and computer programming, work on hands-on projects, and collaborate with partners or small groups.

At Women of Colors, we build a better community. Why does Women of Colors sponsor a program called I’m Still a Man? WOC started the men’s and women’s forums to reach parents. Our volunteers are passionate about promoting safe places for transparent dialogue within and among families.

At Women of Colors, we acknowledge that it takes community to make a difference. We want all youth in the Saginaw community to have a safe and warm winter. Thanks to the help of our donors and volunteers, WOC has made the holidays happier for hundreds of children and families through our annual Warm a Child for Winter event. Learn more about the coat giveaway here: womenofcolors.org/warm-a-child-for-winter

At Women of Colors, we are here for our community. Evelyn McGovern, WOC’s president and cofounder, views community as a key value. “Women of Colors is a community organization,” she says. “We are here for the community. We can’t do what we are doing unless we have collaboration with agencies, businesses, churches, and schools.”

Women of Colors is proud to serve the Saginaw community. Our leaders and volunteers always feel humbled when we measure the impact of our work. Join us in celebrating the impact our programs and initiatives have on individuals and families who live, work, or play in the Great Lakes Bay Region!

Seven out of eight participants surveyed indicated that they enjoyed the topics discussed in WOC Prevention sessions. Eight of eight found their mentor knowledgeable. (February 2020)

20 of 20 people who returned surveys about our forum How I Overcame noted that they would attend similar events in the future. (July 2020)

Nearly 100 students participated in our annual Students and Future Technology program.  (2019)

Over 40 kids and teens in the Saginaw Bay Area attended WOC’s forum Your Voice Your Choice. (January 2020)

Women of Colors hosted five forums in a year attended by a total of 300 people. (2019)

Of the 33 people who returned surveys about the forums Time to Have a Conversation and How I Overcame, 27 noted that they were left feeling “hopeful” and 31 noted that they were left feeling “inspired.” (2020)

In the annual Warm a Child for Winter event, Women of Colors distributed more than 400 coats and winter accessories to children up to 16 years old. (2019)

In a six-month period, Women of Colors reached more than 1,000 community members, including 700 youth. (November 2019–April 2020)

Congratulations to Lynn Brummell-Presley, a Women of Colors featured member! Lynn is an active member of the WOC Prevention Team. Since her parents and siblings migrated to Saginaw, Michigan, from Guyana, South America, she immediately began her involvement with working, volunteering, and knowing the community in which she was about to live.

During that time, she met Yvonne Riggins Thomas and Evelyn McGovern while they were recruiting membership and planning programs for the youth of Saginaw. She first utilized their volunteer services for Saginaw African Culture Festival and Family Youth Initiative (FYI) Programs, for which she served as Vice Chairman and Coordinator, respectively.

Since Lynn was a Licensed Clinical Family Therapist, Certified Advanced Alcohol and Drug Counselor, and Certified Prevention Specialist, she was approached by Evelyn to help make a dream come true. Together, they implemented a prevention program to provide service for youth and adults under the umbrella of WOC. “With my education, organizing, and leadership skills in programming, we were able to complete the tasks before us,” Lynn recalls.

Lynn celebrates the growth and community impact that has come from collaborating with like-minded leaders to make a difference: “We organized and supervised a Prevention Team for WOC. We started with 2 Prevention Specialists, and now we have 11 staff members, which includes 4 volunteer members.” The Prevention Specialists are provided with ongoing trainings throughout the year and utilize evidenced-based programs as defined by Women of Colors, the State of Michigan, and Mid State Health Network.

“I love serving and helping the people of my community, and that’s why I became a social worker,” says Lynn, who shares that they are working with the Prevention Specialists to become certified by McBAP and ICRC very soon. The WOC Prevention Team is already reaching thousands of viewers of all types through virtual and face-to-face programming. Prevention Specialists have been working in Saginaw Middle and High Schools, Saginaw County Juvenile, churches, and homeless shelters, to name just a few!

At Women of Colors, we promote multi-cultural diversity and enhance community relations in Saginaw County by performing community service, mentoring youth, and collaborating with other organizations. Have you ever thought about your personal mission as a member of the Saginaw community? Read on for more information about our programs, plus some fun prompts designed to inspire thought and action around our mission statement—and yours!

1) In the Time to Have a Conversation forum, we hear new perspectives on systemic racism from a variety of panelists who are active community leaders. What conversations have you started or joined?

2) At Women of Colors: Prevention, we give students tips and training on how to cope with anxiety, manage anger, evaluate risk, build self-esteem, and develop social and life skills. What else would be valuable to include in a youth curriculum?

3) In the forum How I Overcame, we hear transparent stories from female panelists who want to inspire listeners to sit more comfortably with or even give voice to their own stories. What have you overcome?

4) We provide STEM training and empower students to take charge of their lifelong learning process through Students and Future Technology, a program for elementary, middle, and high school students. What does “lifelong learning” mean to you?

5) In the event Your Voice Your Choice, we collaborate with Saginaw youth to plan workshops and a talent presentation. Why is it important for young people to have a voice in their community?

6) In the forum I’m Still a Man, we hear from a variety of panelists about their experiences with manhood and what it means to navigate and negotiate that role in today’s society. Why is it important for men to tell their stories?

7) At Warm a Child for Winter, we provide children with warm winter clothing and an event to warm their hearts. How will you spread kindness to others?

Congratulations to Leslie Eschenbacher, a Women of Colors featured member! Leslie works as a Prevention Education Coordinator for the CAN Council and is also instrumental with WOC’s prevention initiatives. Evelyn McGovern, WOC President and Cofounder, nominated Leslie for this member spotlight because Leslie is always willing to help and she embraces diversity, working with a wide variety of individuals from Bay City to Saginaw.

“Women of Colors partners with the CAN Council to provide substance abuse prevention programs to parents,” explains Evelyn. “That’s a great collaboration! Leslie does a parenting program through the CAN Council. She has definitely been an asset to our organization and to the community, and we love having her as part of our team.”

Leslie decided to get involved in prevention activities through WOC after she and her supervisor noticed that a lot of the families they were working with were dealing with substance abuse issues. Leslie’s goal was to become better equipped to help these families. “My supervisor began working with Women of Colors, but I figured I was Caucasian so I wouldn’t be able to work with them to receive the education I was looking for,” Leslie recalls. “Evelyn and Lynn reached out to me, and to my surprise, they agreed to supervise me. I was informed that it’s Women of Colors because all women are accepted. I thought that was amazing. I was excited to be able to get involved with their Prevention Team.”

Leslie is currently a Prevention Specialist with Women of Colors. She is trained in Prime for Life and Racial Justice and Wellness and hopes to be trained in the Botvin program soon. Her team reaches many different types of audiences through their programming: “We train in middle and high schools, churches, other agencies, and juvenile facilities. We will train a class of two or three if they are interested and could benefit from the program. Even being able to help one person is better than helping none.”

From serving her community in this capacity, Leslie has learned that there is always more to learn! “Working with WOC has opened my eyes up to so many things,” she says. “I was not educated in substance use disorder, but I knew it was an issue in the community I served. The trainings and experiences I’ve received will help me serve as a better leader in my community.”

Leslie feels excited and humbled by the potential impact her work could have on people who receive training from the Prevention Team. “I hope that after they leave the trainings, they take everything they have learned and use it to benefit themselves. I hope they look for other resources that will help them become a productive part of their family and community. It is never too late.”