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Now that’s what we call RESEARCH JUSTICE!

Research justice involves a process in which one youth, immigrant, or low-wage worker meets a peer and says, “I am struggling.” That peer responds and says, “I am too.” They share their first-hand knowledge, and, in doing so, two “I” statements are transformed into a “WE” statement. In 2011, DataCenter has helped numerous communities come together and build a resounding chorus of “WE!” Check out this issue of our newsletter to hear how individuals have come together to make a WE. They stand in power, confident of their knowledge.

Communities on the margins, coming together, learning together and raising their collective voice at the center of the decision-making process…now that’s what we call Research Justice!

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Page one (pdf)

• Research Unlocks the Power of Youth in Oakland
• Toxic Beauty No More! Nail Salon Workers Advocate for Their Rights and Safety

Page two (pdf)

• Letter from miho kim, Executive Director
• DataCenter Staff and Board

Page three (pdf)

• From Suspicion to Protection: Muslim Americans Contest Racial Profiling
• Toxic Beauty No More (con’t) with Fast Facts!

Page four (pdf)

• Bringing Justice on the Bus! DataCenter With POWER for Transportation Justice
• Putting the “Care” Back in Foster Care: LGBT Group in Utah Examines and Advocates for Care Standards

Page five (pdf)

• Donor Profile: Isabel Kang from Shimtuh
• “I’m Not Alone!” National Domestic Worker Project Continues to Empower

Page six (pdf)

• Victory! Wage Theft Ordinance Passes in San Francisco!

Congratulations to DataCenter’s coordinating council – Celia Davis, Miho Kim, and Saba Waheed – for winning the Nonprofit Leader Award from the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network’s (YNPN) San Francisco, Bay Area Chapter!

This is a wonderful recognition of the success of DataCenter’s shared leadership model.

Join us for the award ceremony at YNPNsfba’s 14th Annual Party! Date: Thursday, September 15, 2011, Time: 6:00 – 9:00 PM. Click here for more details!

by Anne Ryan | Communications Associate

Do you enjoy bathroom breaks and sick time at work? Does your paycheck arrive on time every month?

While these standard labor practices are recognized in many workplaces, there are still employers who regularly and unapologetically refuse to recognize the law. As a result, hundreds of employees endure abusive working conditions each year in the City of San Francisco alone.

Progressive Workers Alliance outside Wage Theft Hearing. Photo credit: Asian American Movement Ezine (apimovement.com)

However, these employees now have a chance at justice. And in your support of DataCenter, you had a hand in elevating the voices of workers so they can demand that chance. On August 2, 2011, San Francisco city officials enacted the Wage Theft Prevention Ordinance, which strengthens the city’s ability to enforce labor laws. Led by the Progressive Worker Alliance, the campaign was fortified by the 2010 Chinese Progressive Association Report Check, Please!, which DataCenter helped write, that exposed the sweatshop conditions of Chinatown restaurant workers.

Campaign organizer Shaw-san Liu of Chinese Progressive Alliance said, “The Progressive Workers Alliance Campaign to End Wage Theft has been going really well, and our report on Chinatown health and working conditions has been a key part of laying the groundwork. [The Check, Please! Report] contributions are huge to our organizing work today!”

As one San Francisco low-wage worker and wage theft victim said in the Check, Please! study,

“Being a dog would be better than being a worker in the United States.”

The Wage Theft Prevention Ordinance in San Francisco seeks to change this fact. The ordinance grants more power to the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement, which investigates wage theft cases in the city. Additionally, employers who retaliate against a worker who reports an abuse will now pay a double fine. (Read the full ordinance.)

The stories and testimonies of low-wage workers, both in the Check, Please! Report and city council hearings, were the driving force of creating positive, imperative social change for workers in San Francisco. The San Francisco Wage Theft Prevention Ordinance is one step closer to justice for workers in the city community and across the globe.

Other partners that participated in the implementation of the Check, Please! Report include San Francisco Department of Public Health; University of California San Francisco Medical School; University of California Berkeley School of Public Health; and the University of California, Berkeley Labor Occupational Health Program.

by Anne Ryan | Communications Associate

A young Khmer woman presents the KGA survey that she helped conduct.

Read more about DataCenter Training Services!

For the past two years, DataCenter has provided training support and capacity building to Khmer Girls in Action (KGA),  in Long Beach, California that trains young Southeast Asian women to be “relevant social justice organizers who can respond to the immediate needs of the community.” It is organizations like KGA who empower immigrants and 2nd generation immigrant youth to voice their concerns and be justice leaders in their communities.

The 500 surveys of Khmer Youth covered three topics: Reproductive Justice, Immigrant & Refugee Rights and Health & Safety.  After releasing the preliminary report, KGA recently completed a Listening Campaign that will help the Khmer youth, now experts in their community, determine what social and political action they want to take as a result of the information they gathered. During this campaign, over 50 youth and community members discussed the data that has been collected. KGA youth and staff will be presenting the survey and listening campaign results at a number of statewide and national events including:

• USD SOLES Action Research Conference, San Diego, CA
• UCI Asian Women’s Health Summit, Irvine, CA
• API Summit in Sacramento, CA
• SEARAC’s Leadership & Advocacy Training, Washington D.C. and,
• Sistersong’s National Let’s Talk About Sex Conference, Miami, FL

DataCenter is currently support the writing of a full formal report of the survey—stayed tuned for its release and to see how the Khmer youth put their data in action!

Until then, here’s your chance to put some data into action: take a quiz of the survey results and see what you know!

Read more about our work with Khmer Youth!

__________________________________________

Question #1:
1 in 3 youth identify themselves or someone in their family as __________

a)      LGBTQI

b)      Hipster

c)      An activist

Question #2:
1 in ____ youth don’t know where to get tested for pregnancy, STI, STD, or HIV/AIDs

a)      2

b)      10

c)      4

Question #3:
1 in 3 Khmer youth know someone in their family or community who has _____________

a)      Experienced discrimination

b)      Gone skydiving

c)      Been deported or is facing deportation

Question #4:

54% of Khmer youth felt that the Cambodian community faces discrimination. The youth identified 4 key areas of discrimination. Of the areas listed below, which one is NOT one of the 4 key areas?

a)      Language access

b)      Job opportunities

c)      Racial profiling

d)     Education attainment

e)      Natural disaster infrastructure

Question #5:
1 in ____ Khmer Youth was frequently stopped or pulled over by police in 2009

a)      3

b)      5

c)      20

__________________________________________

Answers:

1. (a)
2. (c)
3. (c)
4. (e)
5. (a)

by Anne Ryan | Communications Associate

We are all looking for ways to do our work better. Donors like you give generously to our organization and we want to make sure that every dollar you give is used to fulfill our shared mission and create a better world. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation disburses numerous grants across the world to help organizations function better, and, as a result, help more people and support more communities in more places.

But how do foundations help nonprofits use their grant money to make the deepest impact possible? Over the past two years, DataCenter has been helping the Packard Foundation discover answers to this question. In partnership with Jeff Jackson and Maurice Monette of the Vallarta Institute, Christie Callenback and the *TCC Group, DataCenter recently studied a *sample of 1300 organizational capacity building initiatives across the globe that were funded by the Packard Foundation.

True capacity building efforts last longer than one or two years. In addition to surveying grantee report data from the Packard Foundation, DataCenter surveyed grant recipients to determine what were the results two, three, four and five years after the funding has been used.

In this project, DataCenter played the role of translator: helping the experiences of grantees make it to the ears of foundations that support them. As Linda Wood of the Evenlyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund said, the Packard Foundation “has a goldmine of data that, if made more widely available, could really help the field of nonprofit capacity building.”

Project findings revealed some of the “keys to success” that are necessary when *capacity-building consultants are working with nonprofits. These “keys to success” include that:

• *The consultant has an understanding of nonprofit grantees’ unique needs
• *There is ongoing communication and trusting relationships between the consultant and the nonprofit grantee

Any supporter of nonprofits (and you must be if you’re reading this!) can appreciate this study. It is a pivotal step towards illuminating the power of relationships between funders and grantees, and it is a pivotal step towards helping organizations do their work better, grow, thrive and create a world governed by equality and justice.

Would you like a copy of the study results? Contact anne@datacenter.org for more information!

*Note: Slight changes were made to this article to ensure clarity and accuracy.

by Anne Ryan | Communications Associate

The experience of leaving your homeland to come to the United States: it is a story that is apart of every family.

For the South Asian Network (SAN), it is something that drives their work everyday. DataCenter partnered with SAN to provide two trainings for workers in “Little India” in Artesia, California. These workers are using participatory research to tell their stories, assess the unique challenges they face and decide how to take action.

Restaurant and retail workers who work on Pioneer Boulevard’s “Little India” shared their stories in SAN’s research and oral history project.  The research explored wages, workplace conditions, barriers to taking action when issues arise and needs for services.

How do they use their stories to create real lasting change? That is where DataCenter’s trainings come in. DataCenter helped South Asian workers on the Pioneer Boulevard Workers’ Rights Committee analyze their knowledge and experiences to develop the revelations above. The DataCenter trainings also helped them strategize how to use this knowledge for change.

When you gain new knowledge, it goes three places

1. Ears: this is information you hear, that makes you think and challenges your thinking
2. Heart: This is knowledge that pulls at your heart strings. It’s emotional. It makes you feel.
3. Hands: this is knowledge that makes you act. You take this information wherever you go and it moves  you to do something.

Participants in the training examined the knowledge they collected. Together, they considered who the different audiences of this knowledge will be. Then through an interactive exercise (pictured above), they considered whether they wanted these audiences to hear, feel, or act on the information. This determined how they delivered the information to that audience.  According to Joyti Chand, Coordinator of the Civil Rights Unit at SAN, “The exercise was interactive and it really helped us connect the different pieces” of our strategy. This skill building “is really going to shape the organization’s work for years to come. It’s going to help them consider the audience whenever they move forward with their organizing.”

We are grateful to you, our supporters, for making training like this possible. The communities we work with are grateful too. As Joyti put it,

“DataCenter has a cool combination of knowledge and the ability to meet the community where it’s at…There are not a lot of resources for communities to do research and leadership development with data. We really fully relied on [DataCenter] to do that. It was such a tremendous help without which it would have been much more difficult.”

The full report from SAN and the Pioneer Boulevard Workers’ Rights Committee will be released in a few months. Stay tuned!