Miriam: How is the Sense Project funded? Is that a secured funding?

Christina:

Well, it’s changed. It used to be project-based funding, which is not secured, which is like the little shark floating in the water, like they can just bite you anytime. So yeah, it was based on a $45,000 grant by the Fara foundation, and then from there, there was this whole idea that the Sense Project was going to launch out of Head & Hands, become its own thing, and get like sustainable funding whatever that means. I don’t know what sustainable funding looks like, but now what Head & Hands has decided to do, and based on like a lot of the input that I’ve had and the challenges that I’ve had, I think that I was hired at $12.50 an hour, and didn’t have any vacation, and was like expected to sustain the Sense Project with grant money, and I was like this is so unrealistic guys, unrealistic, not real. So, I then…there was a lot of help obviously from the staff members there and from like creating different types of events and different fundraising opportunities. We decided to say, “Well hey, Sense Project is really just an extension of what we are already doing with our health animation workshops. What would it mean to incorporate it within an entire organization to take my position away from fundraising just for one project, but to help fundraise for the entire organization so that we’re collectively really raising our annual budget to account for this, which makes so much more sense, so much more sustainable, so that means that on top of asking for increases from our main funders, we do more outreach in terms of donor relations, we do more events, we just write different grants or whatever, and it’s all not just for the Sense Project, but for the entire org. So it kind of makes the position feel a little bit more secure, which makes the project seem a bit more secure, a bit more owned by Head & Hands.

Miriam: What do you think is the most problematic thing about doing Grassroots work with youth in the area of sexual health?

Christina:

I think part of it is, there’s a lot of problematic things, but some it is having these goals that we have to meet with funders, like we need to train 30 peer educators. We need to have like all these crazy number goals because we’re relying on this funding, and this funding is not re-occurring, and it’s like we always working in this tension, and also wanting to maintain our Grassroot values, but also try to work with emergent strategies too like knowing that like maybe youth are not going to sign up, maybe they have part-time jobs, maybe they don’t have time to freaking go to our workshops, and like we have to be okay with that, and we have to always maintain a stance in negotiation with funders with youth, to not necessarily force the numbers up because we need to meet those numbers, because who cares if we have 8, it might be better for us in the long run because 8 then makes the group a little bit more intimate, they can be even more creative. Like this idea of having 30 peer educators was so unrealistic. It was based on the funders needs, and so...

The challenge is always trying to come back to the work that we already do and validate that. I mean, why are we ashamed of this? Why do have we have to like - prove to all of these people that we’re just as good, it not better. What we do is just as good, if not better, and that is something that Head & Hands I think, is just trying to learn now.