Behind the scenes at AWHA August 2022
As we encounter rapid and encouraging shifts in the field, AWHA has been undergoing our own transitions. We’re so glad to be increasing staff capacity as our work to house all youth continues. Here’s what we’ve been working on:
Lived Expertise Leads
While we’ve been quiet, we’ve been focusing on a couple of significant developments. Many of you know that AWHA has reconstructed its leadership body (board of trustees equivalent) to be led by Youth and Young Adults with Lived Expertise (YYALE) who comprise the majority of the board. We also assembled a Youth Policy Team who have been leading another one of our notable organizational efforts, The New Deal.
All of this took place during perhaps AWHA’s most significant change which placed professionals with lived expertise at the helm of the organization as co-executive directors. Marcella Middleton and Amanda Ayala were selected to lead A Way Home America into a new era of leadership authentically informed by lived expertise. Unexpectedly, Amanda was offered a long-awaited and life-changing opportunity which led to her transition from the role. Now approaching the role as a sole executive director, Marcella has had the opportunity to bring its challenges into intentional collective reflection as she continues to develop the role for a hopeful return to the co-director model.
These structural changes, while complex and challenging, reflect AWHA’s commitment to our core principles.
Pay Equity
A critical aspect of shifting power in the movement to youth and young adults with lived expertise is ensuring that they are equitably compensated for the work they are doing in a way that acknowledges and honors the firsthand experiential knowledge they bring to our spaces. We amended our budget to accommodate equitable payment for both our YYALE leadership body members and Youth Policy Team members. We followed this with an in-depth youth compensation research analysis in partnership with Lens Co to determine best practices as well as barriers and challenges in equitable compensation for young people with lived expertise.
The New Deal
We’ve been distilling insight offered from our YYALE members to assemble our New Deal to End Youth Homelessness. The New Deal is a bold policy proposal that will be progressed with a multifaceted advocacy effort. The New Deal includes five pillars, the first of which represents our initial focus. As we begin with this first housing justice pillar, we have crafted three concrete policy agenda items
Direct Cash Transfers
Emergency and long-term housing vouchers
Investing in trusted BIPOC & LGBTQ Organizations
With these concrete objectives, impacted communities can pressure elected officials to include them in their legislative priorities. AWHA also sees ourselves as collaborators in the on-the-ground grassroots mobilization.
The Grand Challenge
The other main area of our work is the Grand Challenge which saw some remarkable accomplishments despite the outcomes not being exactly what we predicted. Those who invested in this ambitious program contributed to an amazing effort with effects that extended well beyond the original scope.
Grand Challenge communities were given a methodology and structure to collect and record data that has been used to secure funding
The Grand Challenge is pressing the boundaries of conventional and harmfully reductive definitions of homelessness that don’t acknowledge the full spectrum of housing insecurity
The Grand Challenge gave way for communities to develop more effective organizing models that respond to the local needs identified through their data collection.
As we work to increase our organizational capacity, we welcome others’ perspectives and collaboration in our work. If you are excited or inspired by the transformative work we are doing, we would love to have you as a co-conspirator. Our regular meetings take place at the intervals listed below. You can receive zoom links and calendar invites by contacting emily@awayhomeamerica.org
