Unlock Your Story

 

Cierra is the Founder & Director of Unlock Your Story, an organization that helps women and organizations leverage storytelling and movement for community-building, liberation, and social change.

 

Through Unlock Your Story, Cierra and the team offer writing, editing, and content development services, public speaking coaching, storytelling workshops, and storytelling for social justice consulting. We also create spaces for the storytelling community to come together for support, healing, and strategy.

Unlock Your Story has worked with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Boys & Girls Club, WeWork, The VIVA Shool, DC Web Fest, Rutgers University, Louisiana State University, Pennsylvania State University, the Institute for Women’s Leadership, DC Design Week, 305 Fitness, and more.

Black Girls SOAR

 

Black Girls S.O.A.R (Scholarship, Organizing, Arts, and Resistance) uses art and education to fuel social change through the co-creation of healing-centered spaces for and with Black girls and TGNC (transgender, non-conforming) young people.

 

Black Girls S.O.A.R. was created out of Cierra’s dissertation work, which explored Black girls’ experiences in a virtual summer arts program focused on exploring Black Feminist Thought, Black history, leadership, activism, social change, and community organizing through a healing-centered lens. Throughout the program, Black girls were co-researchers and presented their findings through art in a culminating Community Arts Showcase.

We work alongside Black girls and TGNC youth to disrupt systems and structures of oppression by: 

  • Creating joy-filled and arts-based spaces for Black girls and TGNC youth

  • Training and supporting Black girl and TGNC organizers, activists, artists, and researchers through political education, liberatory pedagogy, and intergenerational strategizing

  • Engaging in school partnerships to infuse social justice curriculum and professional development for educators from the perspectives and leadership of Black girls and TGNC youth

#ReclaimSEL

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In partnership with Communities for Just Schools Fund’s community organizing partners, we released the radical report (“radport”), Reclaim Social-Emotional Learning: Organizing Praxis for Holistically Safe Schools.

 

In a moment when there is a national spotlight on what safe and supportive schools look and feel like, Communities for Just Schools Fund (CJSF) convened our national network of partners (youth, parent, and teacher-led organizing groups) to press back on harmful narratives about safety -- and to instead place conversations about safety into the more holistic, appropriate container of culturally-affirming social-emotional learning (SEL).

Through the year-long Community of Practice, we collected survey data from our partners about their work related to safety and SEL; conducted site visits to places like Long Beach, California, and Juneau, Alaska; hosted in-person and virtual learning exchanges, facilitated a Twitter chat, and held an #SELWebinarSeries. These gatherings centered the critical perspectives of organizers and gleaned important insights about what truly makes schools safe and ensures students feel a sense of belonging. The findings from this year-long exploration of culturally-affirming SEL are detailed in this radport.