CYAP Update: Pausing our Operations
Dear CYAP Community,
Over the last four weeks, CYAP has been navigating the unique spiritual, political, and economic crisis this pandemic has presented to us. To honor the moment we found and continue to find ourselves in, our core team made a commitment to adapt and shift the way our work flowed. Since then, we transitioned all in-person meetings to virtual meetings, prioritized distributing emergency funds, and restructured our plans for the coming months. We’ve been encouraging each other to move into a slower pace and focus on caring and supporting ourselves and our people.
To develop a deeper understanding of how this time has been affecting our community, we facilitated a series of check-ins with youth leaders, campaign strategy volunteers, fellows, talking circle facilitators, and with ourselves as core team members. During our check-ins, we asked folks where they were at, what they’d been holding, how their friends and families had been affected, and what forms of support would feel most helpful. We learned that nearly all of our people were feeling unmotivated, isolated, and overwhelmed. Folks shared that they had been struggling with online learning, rigid expectations around school work, loss of income, increased feelings of panic and anxiety, housing insecurity, health concerns, and caring for loved ones. We also learned that while folks loved and wanted to continue their involvement in CYAP’s work, many weren’t able to participate and be present in the ways they had before.
Acknowledging the impact this pandemic has had and continues to have on our community, we’ve decided to pause all operations from Sunday, April 12th until Monday, May 11th. For the next four weeks, our work will be to rest. That means core team members will take time away from facilitating workshops and trainings, creating curriculum, hosting events, leading coaching sessions, building out our campaign strategy, writing grants, coordinating basebuilding efforts, working with community partners, developing proposals, posting on social media, engaging in our semi-annual review process, checking and responding to emails, and any other CYAP-related tasks. Youth leaders, fellows, and core team members will continue to be paid throughout the four-week period.
Our decision requires us to release the expectations we originally set for the upcoming year. As a result, we will be:
Pausing campaign strategy meetings
Postponing talking circles
Rescheduling all upcoming community events
Restructuring our fundraising plan
Hosting our Youth Leader Institute in the fall
Wrapping up our 2020 Youth Action Alliance one month early
Our decision to pause is rooted in our commitment to wellness, healing, and collective liberation. We know that rest is a radical act, one that girls, trans youth, and gender nonconforming youth are often unable to prioritize. When we return to our work in May, we will reassess our conditions, check in on the needs of our people, and create a new plan of action. We remain committed to building power, to strengthening and sustaining the necessary infrastructure for radical change in the South, and to creating a world where all of us are free and have what we need.
In community,
The CYAP Core Team