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In order to highlight pockets of excellence across the country, the NNED selects a partner organization to highlight once a month. The Korean Women’s Association, has been selected as the Partner of the Month for March in celebration of Women’s History Month.

The Korean Women’s Association (KWA) is a nonprofit organization that services to all of Western Washington through 15 offices in 14 counties and employs 1,400+ employees to serve the diverse needs of more than 10,000 people each year. They provide multi-cultural, multi-lingual human services, regardless of race or ethnic background, to diverse communities through education, socialization, advocacy, and support.

The programs and services that are currently offered:

• Community & Behavioral Health –  KWA has health navigators and staff available in Pierce, King, Snohomish, and Kitsap counties to help you with behavioral health support. There are three ways we address community behavioral health: Group preventative health education, individual care coordination, and individual care coordination for high-risk individuals.
• Domestic Violence Assistance – The KWA Domestic Violence Assistance program provides services to any and all survivors, regardless of gender, age, race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or other cultural identities. Supportive services are provided at a separate location from the confidential shelter.
• Social Services – KWA’s Social Services department provides free support for those most in need. They can help you navigate a number of programs providing basic needs.
• Senior Support – Beacon and Lighthouse Senior Activity Centers provide seniors find that the ability to interact with other older adults in social settings results in the improvement of their mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional well-being. Two centers focus on helping the participants achieve these goals by hosting various classes and activities that enhance the senior’s quality of life.
• Affordable Housing – KWA owns and manages a varied portfolio of properties – with more than 200 units of affordable housing for working, disabled, and seniors with various incomes. They currently operate three senior housing properties and two low-income housing properties.

Learn more about the Korean Women’s Association, and their commitment to serve multi-cultural, multi-lingual communities to make a positive difference in people’s lives in the Western Washington area.

View a list of previous NNED Partners of the Month.

Since the calls for change in the wake of George Floyd”s death, one group of young women has pushed to continue those conversations for social justice and equity. They go by the name of Black Women in Charge, made up of 10 members—mostly college students—that helped organize some of the peaceful marches in Indianapolis last summer. Today, they’re still working with community leaders and politicians to push for racial justice and equity. One of their proudest accomplishments to date? Helping oversee a general review board for Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

Member Langdan Willoughby has a special interest in raising awareness on racial disparities within health care and shining light on food desserts in Indianapolis.

“Even outside of the police, we met with the USDA,” Willoughby said, about the efforts to understand and highlight the impact of food desserts on Black communities, “especially on Black women and it’s specific impact through obesity and mental health.”

When asked if they plan on expanding, they said they don’t want to bite off more than they can chew, but have no plans of backing down from their purpose any time soon.

“We have a standard that we kind of set for ourselves, and it’s extremely high, so they can’t even say, ‘Oh, they were just some young girls. They didn’t know what they were talking about.'” Sadiyah Anderson explained. “We put ourselves to an extremely high standard so they actually will listen to our message and hopefully receive it well.”

Read more on WTHR.com.

The film opens with ominous music, the unimaginable grief of an entire community and the woman trying to hold them all together.

“The Bears on Pine Ridge,” one of this year’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival short docs, explained how the Oglala Sioux Nation of Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota declared a state of emergency in 2015 for high rates of suicide among their youth.

Between Christmas 2014 and June 2015 on Pine Ridge, 11 kids died by suicide and another 176 attempted suicide, according to Indian Health Services. The local Sweetgrass Suicide Prevention Project made contact with 276 kids exhibiting behaviors associated with suicidal ideation in that time, too.

The film quoted the then Oglala Sioux Nation president John Yellow Bird, stating: “We are struggling. We simply cannot bear to lose any more of our children … Whenever we lose one child, it hurts the spirit and soul of every one of our people.”

Despite the request for federal assistance, they weren’t given enough aid to meet the tribe’s mental health needs and so several residents came together to form suicide prevention programs like Sweetgrass.

Yvonne “Tiny” DeCory is one of the strongest advocates for these kids and has dedicated her life to supporting them.

One of the opening scenes of the film depicts DeCory guiding crying teens with candles and memorial signs in a march. She instructed them to pray for their lost peer, to be there for one another and to never leave the side of their struggling friends.

“This is a hard time for us because we don’t have any answers,” she said to the gathered mourners. “And we can ask each other why, but we’ll never know why because he’s taken everything with him. But you guys have to be there for each other.”

Director Noel Bass became interested in Pine Ridge’s situation in 2011, after he battled mental illnesses himself. He spent time volunteering on the reservation and soon got to know DeCory. They became close over the years as he made more frequent and extensive trips to the reservation and in 2015 he decided to make the film to spread awareness of the issue.

“I’m hoping that people connect with the individuals themselves, that they really feel what they’re going through. They feel the crisis. They feel the fear. They feel the reality of the suicide situation,” Bass said. “This isn’t just statistics, this isn’t just things you could find online or a news broadcast that goes in for a day and covers a story, this is an investment in trying to get people to care.”

The kids of the BEAR Project shared their stories, they spread joy through dancing and they refused to give up.

Even when Sweetgrass lost funding less than a year into the state of emergency, DeCory never gave up either. She knew the suicides would keep happening if nobody was there to help. So she’d help, money or no money.

“I feel like I just don’t have a choice, you know?” DeCory said. “I don’t have a choice to quit. Because that’s not me.”

Read more on Missoulian.com.

Nurses are often the first medical professionals a patient will see, and most nurses have a great deal of contact with patients throughout their care, said Maysa Akbar, chief diversity officer at the American Psychological Association. In addition to the stress they face as medical professionals, Black people are generally more likely to have feelings of sadness, hopelessness and worthlessness than White adults, according to Mental Health America.

Black nurses are also dying from the virus at a disproportionate rate. Almost 18% of the US nurses who have died from Covid-19 and related complications as of September were Black, but Blacks make up only 12% of the nurse population, according to National Nurses United.

Throughout Olivia Thompson’s 12-hour shift as a cardiac and Covid-19 nurse in Chandler, Arizona, she closely monitors the oxygen levels of several patients at a time and works with other medical specialists to heal them.

Thompson says there are times when she said she comes home “absolutely defeated,” so on those days, she gives herself the space to process her emotions by talking with her family and watching television.

“If I don’t take care of myself, I can’t turn around and go back to my next shift and be a good nurse,” Thompson said.

She hasn’t sought professional mental health support so far.

More than 17% of Black adults in the US had a mental illness in 2019, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. But people in the Black community can have a hard time reaching out for mental health care, said Cheryl Taylor, associate professor and past chair of the school of nursing at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

She said it’s important to feel safe when opening up to a mental health care professional, and that’s not easy for Black people, who have a history of not being respected in the mental health world.

Black people often receive lower quality mental health care, said Shalonda Kelly, associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. It’s also less likely they’ll receive culturally competent care, according to the American Psychological Association.

One way to increase the chances of Black people receiving quality mental health care is to see a mental health professional of the same race, Kelly recommended.

Thompson says she’s looked into mental health support in the past, but navigating those resources for the first time can be “overwhelming,” which has contributed to her not taking that first step.

Nurses shouldn’t hesitate to reach out for mental health support when they need it, Taylor said, because it means they’re practicing what they preach as nurses.

“Give yourself permission to be as compassionate with yourself as you are with others,” Cheryl Taylor said.

Read more on ABC17News.com.

Many communities are seeing a disturbing wave of anti-Asian violence in recent weeks, including robberies, burglaries and assaults targeting older Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) individuals.

The incidents come more than a year after many Asian Americans began experiencing Covid-related racism fueled by xenophobia, as well as former President Trump’s repeated use of a racist description of the coronavirus. Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition documenting and addressing anti-Asian discrimination during the pandemic, received over 2,800 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate between March 19 and Dec. 31, 2020.

The violence has already discouraged some parents from sending kids back to school for in-person learning, and kept Asian American residents and their allies on high alert.

Yet despite increasing calls for public awareness and action, many advocates say employers aren’t doing enough provide support for AAPI employees who may be impacted by the news, or to recognize their own anti-Asian discrimination within the workplace.

One reason why more people aren’t speaking up on the news, whether they’re Asian American or not, may be due to a continued erasure of AAPI discrimination in the U.S. through what’s known as the model minority myth, which holds the economic advancement of some Asian American individuals as a measure that AAPIs as a whole don’t experience racism.

“Part of the myth is that we stay quiet, we’re apolitical, that issues we’re experiencing are not valid or are not attached to our race,” Michelle Kim, CEO of the diversity training provider Awaken says. “There’s a continual investment in upholding this myth, and we need to question who benefits from it, because it’s not us or other marginalized people.”

Whether related to perceived cultural norms or otherwise, some Asian Americans may feel the need to power through the normal routines of their day despite the many challenges of living through a pandemic, and on top of increased violence targeted toward people who look like them and their families.

Non-Asian American friends and colleagues can show support by checking in with AAPI peers, showing they’re aware of the news, demonstrating care for their wellbeing and offering specific forms of help.

Asking someone an open-ended question — “how are you feeling?” or “is there anything I can do for you?” — can create an emotional burden for the recipient in their response.

Instead, as a coworker, you might acknowledge that the news is distressing, and then offer to take a meeting off their plate, extend a deadline or pitch in on a project. Let the person impacted dictate how they want to do their work, she adds, and at the same time be explicit in your offer of support based on what they need.

Read more on CNBC.com.

With the COVID-19 pandemic raging and the current political climate, Americans feel stressed.

For many Black people, many political issues are multiplied.

Dr. Aderonke Pederson is a psychiatrist and instructor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Northwestern University. She’s an advocate for Black health and wellness.

She says while we celebrate Black History Month, we also need to examine the impact COVID-19 and racism have on the daily lives of Black people.

“While there’s a lot of celebration in the Black community, there’s a lot of reflection, too,” Dr. Pederson said.

She said racism can affect your health.

“We’re talking about stress that builds up, generational stress, individual stress, so, again, it’s coming at people from both sides,” she said.

It’s not just affecting mental health, but also physical health.

“It builds up stress hormones, and those stress hormones include things like Cortisol, and when Cortisol builds up, it puts you at risk for things like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, hypertension, obesity,” Pederson said.

Read more on ABC7Chicago.com.