Youth Build Women's Group (2021)
During the second half of my fellowship with North Shore CDC, I joined weekly meetings with the North Shore CDC’s YouthBuild Women’s Group where staff and our womxn-identifying young adults talk openly about success, challenges, and topics of interest as they work towards their GED or other professional and personal goals. Seeing that many of the members had some form of a creative outlet, I began facilitating journaling exercise that asked members to describe their future using a mindfulness technique using the five senses.
I documented these journal entries as patterns where I hand-wrote responses in a module and created repeating patterns to symbolize the continued affirmations we promise ourselves.
In another exercise, I invited youth to respond to phrases and words (heartbeat, slow down, flowing) through abstract scribbles and drawings. This also led to interesting patterns.
I included these patterns as well as other quotes and photos collected during my remaining time with Women's Group into a zine.
