OVERVIEW

Liberatory Research, the educational arm of Social Insights Research, hosted an educational webinar providing an in-depth exploration of Social Insights' research partnership with The Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT), an initiative of Springboard to Opportunities that provides low-income, Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi with a guaranteed income for 12 months. Guests included the Social Insights Research team, Sarah Stripp from Springboard, and our program alumni consultant Tamika Calhoun. During the webinar, we shared our research methodology, implementation, impacts, and the challenges of utilizing a liberatory project approach.

RESOURCES

• The Magnolia Mother’s Trust Website

• The Magnolia Mother’s Trust Alumni Study Executive Summary (2023)

• The Magnolia Mother’s Trust 2021 - 2022 Evaluation Report

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: So we're gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you and welcome to the Liberatory Research in Action webinar. This is our first Liberatory Research in Action live public event, so thank you for being here. I wanna just take a moment to let you know that this is, of course, being recorded and you will have access to the recording on our website www.LiberatoryResearch.com afterwards. I am, of course, being joined by an amazing panel here, who you'll get to hear from in just a moment. But, I also just want to shout out Miko Brown, our Admin and Community Engagement Manager, who is going to be managing our webinar and managing our questions at the end that are in the chat.

So, thank you so much for being here and just want to start with gratitude. Really, Liberatory Research started out as a passion project to uplift liberation, a critical approach to thinking about how we can do research better in service of our communities and to really uplift methods that are often ignored by the mainstream. And so, we started with online courses and providing resources online for folks about these different methods and approaches. And we are in our fourth year, and have started hosting these events in order to give more access to folks all over the country and the world, to how these methods are being lived out in real practice with real people in the real world. And so, again, we just hope you learn a lot today and hope you enjoy hearing from our panelists. And I'm going to pass it to them to introduce. So I'm gonna start with Sarah from Magnolia Mother's Trust.

Sarah Stripp | she/her | MMT Program Director: Awesome. Thanks, Zuri. So my name is Sarah Stripp | she/her | MMT Program Director. I'm the Program Director, with Springboard to Opportunities, which is the larger nonprofit organization that holds The Magnolia Mother's Trust. My pronouns are she/her and we are located in Jackson, Mississippi. And, I think my personal motto and quote are kind of the same thing from Fannie Lou Hamer, which is “Nobody's free until everybody's free,” which I think is a big part of the reason why I do the work that I do, and continue to stay committed to it.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thank you, Sarah. We're just gonna keep going. You can pass it to anyone.

Sarah Stripp | she/her | MMT Program Director: Oh, perfect! I'll pass it to Christyl.

Christyl Wilson Ebba | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Hello, everyone! My name is Christyl Wilson Ebba. I am a Research and Evaluation Manager at Social Insights. My pronouns are she and her. I'm located in Georgia and, in this current season, my motto is “Look for the lesson.” And so, I'm really leaning into learning whatever I can from anything, any experience, whether it's good, bad, or ordinary. I'll pass it to Sashana.

Sashana Rowe-Harriott | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Hi, everyone! I'm Sashana Rowe-Harriott. I use she/her pronouns and I'm based in Georgia. I'm a Research and Evaluation Associate at Social Insights and my motto is one of my favorite verses Micah 6, verse 8, which is, “Do justice and love goodness, and walk humbly with your God.” I will pass it to Jamela.

Jamela Clark | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Hi! My name is Jamela Clark, and I am a Research and Evaluation Project Lead here with Social Insights and I am based in Chicago – Chicagoland. And my favorite quote is from The Prophet written by Kahlil Gibran and it says, “For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its meaning and is refreshed.” So, just a reminder to me to think about the small things and how small things can create these big things and create larger meaning bigger than ourselves. So, I will pass it over to Tamika.

Tamika Calhoun | she/her | MMT Alumna & Evaluation Advisor: Hi, everyone! I'm Tamika, and I am…well, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a Magnolia Mother's Trust alumni mom who trained with Social Insights to do the interviews. And my motto is “I am a work in progress.” I always say that I'm always progressing. And my favorite quote is “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” And I'll pass it on to Nidal.

Nidal Karim | she/they | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Thank you, Tamika. Hi, everyone! I'm Nidal Karim and I use she/they pronouns, and I am based on Cherokee Muscogee lands in Atlanta. And I'm a Evaluation, Research, and Strategy Consultant with Social Insights. And my personal motto is based on a Rumi quote that says that “Only from the heart can you touch the sky.” And it really just for me… I try to do everything I do from a place of love, so that really resonates for me. I'll pass that back to you, Zuri.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thank you so much. This is an amazing group that we have here today, and I'll just close. I'm Dr. Zuri Tau, and I'm the founder of Social Insights and Liberatory Research. I'm based in Atlanta on Muscogee land and the quote that continues to guide me through this work is that “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

So, we are going to jump into an exploration of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust Project and Social Insights’ evaluation of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust. Social Insights is Liberatory Research’s sister organization. It is a research and evaluation firm. We have our five year anniversary today and Magnolia Mother's Trust has been a project that we've been working with for…this is our fourth year? Yes. So, we are so excited to be talking about this for our first webinar. So, let's just jump right to it. So I wanna start with you, Sarah, and just talking about how we got started with the Magnolia Mother's Trust evaluation. And from, you know, your perspective, we weren't actually the first evaluators that you had and our approach to the evaluation has shifted a lot over the last several years. So, I'm really curious about your experience being the program director and if you could tell us a little bit about that journey.

Sarah Stripp | she/her | MMT Program Director: Yeah, for sure. So, when we started The Magnolia Mother’s Trust – just as some background, a guaranteed income program providing $1,000 a month to mothers in affordable housing in Jackson, Mississippi, for 12 months, in addition to a deposit in a children savings account for each of their kids – you know, it really came and was born from the idea of of our mothers themselves. So, we really pride ourselves on being an organization that we say is radically resident-driven. So everything that we are doing, all the programs and services that we create, are being created and evaluated and designed in partnership with our families.

So, when we were asking moms just like Tamika, like, “What is it that you really need to be able to like, break cycles of poverty and get to a place where you need to be?” They continue to tell us again and again that it wasn't, you know, another workforce development program, or after school program, or whatever, but that they needed cash. Like you can't achieve the things that you want to do if you don't have the money on hand to be able to do it. You can't budget your way out of poverty, all those kind of things. And so, with the first few cohorts of The Magnolia Mother's Trust, you know, it really was about just kind of putting money in the hands of families and seeing what happens. and trying to understand, you know, I think like what folks wanted to do with the money, trying to see how close folks could get to their goal, like what those different things would look like right. And it was a lot of quantitative research, you know, just trying to understand, basically like where this is coming from and what this looks like.

And, I think, after a couple of years of that we really realized that that quantitative data was gonna always be extremely limited and what it could tell us and that it was also like very much trying to prove what other people wanted to know, right, not what our moms wanted to know. It was trying to justify this as a program, right, and saying, like “This is getting people closer to this moral American ideal of being a good citizen who goes to work and and spends money on their family, and, you know, isn't spending money on ‘frivolous things,’”...or whatever that looks like. But wanting to kind of create this model person in poverty, right, that we kind of have these ideas and stories about. And it just kind of got to the point where we're like, “Well, that's not. That's not the point of this program.” The point has always been to support our families in being able to find freedom, to be able to find agency and self-efficacy, and knowing themselves and being able to get to that point. This isn't about trying to prove that they can fit into this model of whatever we've created in American society as what somebody is supposed to look like.

And so, we wanted… and at the same time, I'll say, too, like there was so much – this was kind of in 2020, this was during Covid – and so there was so much like research being done around cash and what was happening with cash because people were getting the…the Child Tax Credit started and there was a lot of research going around that. Also, the emergency checks that were coming from the government, there was research happening around that. And again and again, we were just creating these studies that showed like, when you give people cash, they spend it on their basic needs, they spend it on their families, they spend it on food, on the things that they care about, right. Because those are, generally speaking, going to be people's priorities.

And we were kind of at a point where we said, “Well, why are we continuing to contribute to the stuff that we already know, right.” That we already know that this is what's happening and like, you know, I don't know. That doesn't make any sense. And so, we really wanted to be a part of creating a research design that was centered in families and designed by families, and understood by our participants as opposed to kind of creating something for an external audience, but actually helping us understand, like, “What is the point of what we're doing? And how is this really serving our families?”

And so, we put out an RFP (request for proposals) just like looking for folks who kind of understood this vision and this idea and Social Insights responded to that. And, you know, through different interviews and relationships, we realized we were really on the same page about wanting to create something that had families at the center, where our moms who are part of the program were going to be a part of the research design and evaluation which for us as a radically resident-driven organization – we always say our families’ voices are the final evaluative measure for everything that we're doing. So, that made perfect sense to us and making sure that we knew that that was gonna come.

And then really switching from this quantitative model of data to a more qualitative model that was gonna say, like, “You know, what is at the heart of the change that's happening for families?” You know, we don't really care what people are spending their money on. I think we get that question all the time from folks like when we give talks like this and at the end they'll be like, “Yeah, but did you track like what people spent their money on?” And we're like. “No. Like, no, we didn’t.” Because that's not our business, and that's not what we really care about. But, it was coming to understand the deep internal changes that happened for moms when you gave them a program where you said like, “We trust you, we think you know how to use these resources better than anybody else to be able to care for your family. We want you to be able to have the agency and freedom to be able to work towards your goals in the way that you see best.”

And we wanna know, like, what does having that kind of program…what does that do to shift kind of the stories that mothers have told themselves? Or have heard about themselves for, you know, years and years and years about, you know, whether that's an idea like you're a deficient mother because you're not making enough money, or you're not able to care for people in the way that you want to, or whatever that is. How can this shift that story for them? And that was really such a beautiful part of what Social Insights presented to us and what they wanted to do. And it really just became a beautiful collaborative relationship of being able to work to do that and to be able to bring in mothers like Tamika to make that process even better.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Well, thank you so much. Yes. Segueing to the team. Could you share with everybody here the approach and some more details about how this has unfolded over the last several years? Jamela and Christyl, I'm going to pass it to you, and we're actually going to share some slides.

Christyl Wilson Ebba | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Okay. So I think Jamela will get us started and talk a little bit more about the background, and then I'll go ahead and jump in and discuss our methods and how our evaluation has evolved over time.

Jamela Clark | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Yes, so just getting started. As was shared, Magnolia Mother's Trust has been in operation since 2018, and Social Insights became the evaluation partner in 2021. All of the studies and evaluations that are conducted are longitudinal, and so far we've completed three cohort evaluations and an alumni study that was led by my teammates here. This is my first year on the project. So when I say I fangirl everyone on this team, I mean it from the bottom of my heart.And what is particularly unique about the way the study is conducted is that it truly centers liberatory approaches in how it engages the moms literally from start to finish of each cohort.

And so, I'm just going into the background of the evaluation a bit. This is the team. So the original team members are Nidal, Sashana, Mani-Jade, Christyl, Asia, and Stephanie. I'm the newcomer on the team. And of course, our partners at Springboard: Aisha, Sarah, and Natasha, all of which I've had the pleasure of working with this year as well, as well as Tamika, who I recently met, who was a part of the alumni study. And so, when I say that this is just a lovely team and just such a freeing way to do work, I really mean that.

And so, going back into how the evaluation is conducted. We really centered on like amplifying moms’ voices and, to Sarah's point, really digging into the nuances that moms have to navigate in terms of the trajectory of their lives. Folks' lives don't stop because they're being evaluated or a part of the program, they move forward. And so, throughout the process the evaluation team is there every step the way. And the aim of this is really to shift narratives and ideas about how low-income, Black mothers are viewed, as well as perceptions that are negative surrounding guaranteed income.

And so, when we think about liberatory approaches, some of the things that have been centered and elevated, particularly in this evaluation across all the cohorts, are making sure that when moms are very informed about how they're going to be involved in the project and how they want to be involved in the project. So we don't limit it to simply we're going out, we're conducting these in-depth interviews. It's “We're gonna be doing interviews, but how do you want your story to be shared? How do you want your narrative to be projected to anyone who's gonna be engaged with this work?” So, for example, in the current case study cohort that we're working on. Moms write quarterly letters to themselves where they're exploring their own personal changes and this is also being included in our study because it's really them tracking their own personal changes. And so once again, to share Sarah's point, we're not looking at these quantitative metrics, but we're looking at this very introspective, intimate way that moms are seeing themselves change, seeing their families change, and seeing their well being changed through these letters.

Additionally, throughout all cohorts, moms have been…we've used accessible language with moms. So, you know, literature says one thing, people talk another way. So, how can we make sure that in all of our survey tools and interview tools we're using language that's accessible and understandable and easy to digest. And moms are also offered multiple ways to provide their data. So, if folks don't feel like writing, let's just have a conversation about the questions that are in our writing prompts. For previous cohorts, where folks were part of a photo voice project, which Christyl will get into in more detail, there are also different opportunities to use text or audio to describe visually what the moms were taking pictures of.

And most importantly, and one that is near and dear to my heart, is folks get paid! We are not just going out and collecting data and looking at folks with…more, you know, Western paradigms of research where it's like “You are a subject, and your contribution to this study is you're contributing to the greater good of knowledge.” It's “Okay, you're contributing to the greater good of knowledge, and you'll be paid for it because it's your experience, it’s your knowledge, it’s your expertise, and we are learning from you.” And so that is…are some of the approaches that we integrate into our work.

Christyl Wilson Ebba | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Absolutely. Thank you. Jamela. I'm going to go ahead and talk a little bit about the methods and I'll also get into how they've evolved over time over our four years of working with the program. So we do use surveys and, like we talked about, we know that…we understand the limitations of that. So, we have a lot of different methods as well.

So, we have surveys. Our surveys will touch on demographics. We'll ask moms about, you know, access to basic needs, different personal development questions like self-efficacy and also program satisfaction. And one thing that I wanna mention is that we did get consultation from moms on the survey instrument. So, when we developed the survey, we engaged with a couple of moms to pilot the survey. So they took the survey and we met with them afterwards to discuss how the questions were landing with them, and what types of things they would change. And that was important, because it gave us…Some examples of what came out of that, it gave us some ideas about questions to ask about program satisfaction, and how they were experiencing MMT (The Magnolia Mother’s Trust). And another example of something that came out of that is, we shifted some of the language around our questions about mental health because the mom who we were consulting with talked about how reluctant some folks might be to share that they are feeling depressed or that they are struggling with mental health. And so that was, you know, very key.

Another method we had was virtual photovoice. So, some of you may be familiar with photovoice. It's a qualitative method where folks are taking pictures that document their lived experiences, their realities. We thought this was a great method to use with moms because we could see…you know, they could share with us their reality as they were seeing it, literally. It's an accessible method, and I like it because involved…it invites a lot of narrative and discussion that we may not get through surveys or interviews. I can say with confidence that we gleaned a lot of stories, a lot of nuance through the photovoice as well as the narratives that accompanied them that we would not have been able to get otherwise.

So, I'll give some examples of the kinds of prompts we gave for photovoice. For example, we asked them to capture or take a picture of a joyful moment that they have gotten to experience while in the program. Another thing is, we asked them to take a photo of something that represents a challenge that might be getting in the way of their goals, or you know something that reflects a concern you might have in your day-to-day experience. And so we have these photos and these rich, beautiful stories that we're able to dig into. We also have an experience to debrief with the moms at the end of the year. We had focus groups with some of the moms where they got to share about their experience and really look back on the year that they had through these photos and, again, offer some more context and really get a chance to tell their story.

Another method we used was, we call it post-text or journaling prompts. And this kind of started as a modified version of ecological momentary assessment, or EMA. Some of you might not know that as a method where you gather, you know, tidbits of data in real time as a person is, you know, in their lived reality that reflects what they're going through at that time. So, this kind of was adapted and kind of evolved into a journaling method, where we gathered both quantitative and qualitative data. So, we used a lot of different journaling prompts. So, for example, we did have moms write letters to their future selves. or we asked them to imagine that they have all the money, time, and resources in the world, and describe then the biggest goal they'd be able to achieve.

And we also asked…we asked them what they would want policy makers or a news reporter to know about their experience in MMT. And, as you can imagine, we're getting very rich stories from their narratives that, again, we would not be able to capture otherwise. These pulse checks and journal prompts, these are regular check-ins. They're all also helpful because they were an opportunity to be responsive to moms’ current realities, especially thinking about the greater context that they were living in. So one example of this is the Jackson Water crisis. So some of you might know that Jackson, Mississippi, had a – I think it's ongoing – has a crisis with water. It was declared a federal emergency at one point. And so, we use this as an opportunity to check in with moms in real time about how this was affecting them personally, how it was affecting their children, and, also, to ask, “What type of support do you need?” and trusting that they are the experts of what type of support that they need. And then we were able to communicate this with Springboard. So that in this way the evaluation is iterative, it's agile, it's responsive. We're not waiting till the end of the program to give all of this feedback about what could have been.

Interviews have also been a part of our methods and an important piece about this that Jamela talked about was that we trained and paid former alumni moms to conduct the interviews. So, they, of course, had support from Social Insights along the way. But this was key, this was crucial because moms – this is all of our approaches, I will say – at the heart of our liberatory approaches is the recognition that people are the experts of their own lives. Our role is just to help capture and tell their story. So, we trust moms to be an integral part of this process. So, yeah. So, we had moms to actually provide feedback on the interview questionnaire and to also facilitate those interviews.

We also had an alumni study last year where we engaged with former alumni moms and their children. So, that's our dual generational engagement where we are not just looking at the individual who's getting a guaranteed income but how this really impacts them short- and long- term, looking at both perspectives through the parent and the child. And so, for that, we had focus groups with children and with moms and kind of integrated those narratives in our reporting. One thing I will mention is about the language, Jamela touched on using accessible language. That also comes into play in how we communicate about evaluation activities. So, one phrase that we used was “Storytelling Fridays” and that captured how we talked about the check ins. So, it wasn't, you know, this lofty evaluation term. It was a chance to tell your story and share it with us, and then that way it was more accessible.

Okay, so, looking at how the evaluation has changed over time. I have here the different years that we've done this. We've done surveys every year. Our photovoice and journaling prompts were a part of the earlier years. We've done the alumni interviews as we mentioned. Focus groups. And, currently, the way that it's shifted is in our current interview we are doing case studies. So, this is an opportunity to get more in-depth with a few of the moms to really understand their lived experience and capture what their lives are looking like throughout this program and the changes that they experience.

And then, finally, I'll just touch on our reports. Another part of our liberatory approach is making sure things are accessible. So, that also extends to our reporting. So, we make sure our reports are vibrant and beautiful to look at but also very enriched with the moms’ stories. So, you can see on this screen a picture of the reports that we've had over the years. And the one that we have coming up will...our next report will be in the summer and I believe they are accessible through the Springboard website. I'll wrap it up there. Thank you.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thank you so much, Christyl and Jamela, for digging into those methods. This has been such a journey. And I'm curious, Sarah, this is very different from your, you know, typical research approach. Why did this work for MMT?

Sarah Stripp | she/her | MMT Program Director: Yeah, I mean, I think there's kind of several reasons why it worked. The first is really how much it aligned with Springboard’s value again, of being radically resident-driven and including families as a part of it. I also think there was just like such a important piece of like being able to incorporate like language that families were using and important updates about things like Christyl was talking about with the Jackson water crisis, like being able to respond to things that were happening in real time. It makes research feel more relevant to peoples’ lives, right, as opposed to kind of like just some, you know, big, broad survey that was created five years ago that you continue to give to people. Like, it just doesn't let them engage in the same way and I think it makes it hard for things to make sense.

Like, even, I was thinking about this as I was preparing for these questions yesterday, you know, we just had a pulse check go out and it was around the children savings accounts that we set up, and we do those as…they're 529 accounts but, you know, that kind of language of like 529 investment accounts is not the way that, like, our moms refer to those accounts. So, you ask them about a 529 account, and they're like, “I don't have one of those.” But, if you say “You know, the savings account Springboard’s set up for your kids…” [then it’s] “Oh, okay! That I get.” And so, thinking about how do we make sure that what's on the survey is aligned to, like, the way folks are actually talking about their lives and understanding their lives is so important and just like gets us richer and better data.

And, I think it really allows moms to be able to use this as a platform to share their story which, again, is more what we're trying to do with this, as opposed to collecting a bunch of data, or like having a bunch of numbers that we can present to people. But ,having this be a way that we can actually have lived experiences and stories and folks telling their own experience on their own terms as research. And I think that's really beautiful and ultimately what we wanna do.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thank you. I'm curious about...I think we've heard a lot about what worked well and, of course, there's always gonna be some challenges when you're doing something new and as complex as the sort of mixed methods…in addition to training new researchers as a part of a project, and you have less than a year to do it. That's another thing to note here. So tell me a little bit about the challenges, Social Insights team, to actually make this approach happen.

Nidal Karim | she/they | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Zuri, maybe I can start on that one. As Jamila mentioned, so, I was part of the team that started with the third cohort, which was our first evaluation with Magnolia Mother's Trust. And, to speak of the challenges I really also kind of need to speak of the stress like they go hand-in-hand. It's kind of like two sides of the same coin, right. And so, two of the things I wanna highlight here. One is, and this was mentioned by several other folks already, is a big strength of our approach, was iterating – that we stayed flexible and we were iterating based on what we were hearing from moms and also what MMT moms needed for this to work for them. And part of that means that then you're having to shift and so I think I don't wanna say it as a challenge, it's more of what was our lessons, and that every year that we did this work, or every time we did a storytelling or a survey, we were very much trying to also walk away with, “What do we learn? What do we need to do different the next time?” so we weren't repeating the same things and having the same challenges.

And, of course, there's some challenges that will continue. So, for example, I'll give an example of the first year. I would say we learned a lot. We went in, we wanted to do everything in this…you know, we had this beautiful proposal. We were training a subset of moms and Tamika was part of that first crew who worked with us and was so generous. and we worked in training them to be the interviewers. And what we learned is, yes, this is amazing, AND moms have very busy and unpredictable hours. A lot of them have children, you know, who might be out of school, who might get sick. Transportation is not reliable. So, really like thinking about “This is what we want to do. And then, what is it gonna take?” And we had to shift our plans several times in order to be like, “Oh, wait! Actually, this is gonna take this much time. It's actually gonna take three of us instead of two of us.” So, it's that kind of flexibility that I would say, you know, Social Insights was having to navigate and we tried to do, and having Springboard really supporting us, too.

So, this was very much a lot of conversation happening between us and Sarah and her team of “Hey, this is what we're struggling with. What do we do?” So, that's what I mean is like iteration as a strength and a challenge and the beauty of it is when you're able to kind of be water and keep moving along what, you know, like as the river changes its banks. Like saying, “Okay, this is how we need to move.” So, that's one thing I would say is a strength/challenge.

The other thing I would love to highlight is…it's kind of similar. I know we talked about how, you know, there was need for qualitative data, but I feel that another thing we did was really lean on methods the way they're supposed to be leaned on, which is strategically that no method is better than another method, that they should be driven by what our questions are, and what is going to work for the folks we are working with. And so, as you notice, we did do surveys. But, what one of the first things we did…we made the survey way shorter than it originally was in previous iterations before we came into the picture ‘cause we wanted it to feel not overly burdensome.

And then each time we were going back and seeing, “Okay, how are these questions working? What questions are working? What questions aren't working?” And then, even with when we did our interviews, part of our training with the moms where they were training to be the interviewees…and when I say training, I mean, they are natural interviewers. But, it was more just like talking about the questions we had come up with. But, we spent significant amount of time with them, telling us, “Are these the right questions? Are we even asking them the right way? What needs to change?” And we completely shifted our interview protocol. Our draft was shifted based on all of the input that the moms who were working with us gave us. So, again, like really having the room to do that, right, that then we are changing our tool in the moment and then going into doing interviews.

So, just like planning around things like that, it just looks different. It requires a different kind of spaciousness. It requires a different kind of resourcing. And I just I share all that to say, Sometimes folk will get really excited about doing the work in these ways that are more liberatory and then try to do it within, like, the constraints of, like, what is business as usual. And so, that's why I just lift those up, not so much as challenges, but as like the realities of what it takes to do this. And that there will be a million hiccups along the way and to have grace for each other as we move through it.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: I love these keywords around being water, having grace for ourselves and, you know, this process when we are taking a very different approach than business as usual. And, also, I think, having an organization that was on board with this style of evaluation and research was a big part of that. So, thanks, Nidal, for talking about the training program as well. And, Tamika, I'd love to hear a little bit, one, just about your experience with the MMT program itself because that is, you know, a big part of even the reason why we met you, right. And then, I'd love to hear more about your experience becoming an interviewer and then later a consultant to the project.

Tamika Calhoun | she/her | MMT Alumna & Evaluation Advisor: Thank you. So my experience with MMT was a great experience. It was just what I needed for the goals I had set for myself and my favorite part was there were no stipulations on what you can spend the money on like they allowed us to know what we needed it for that worked for our families. They weren't saying, “Well, you can only spend it on this.” which was helpful. And, it also set things in motion for me. Like I said it aligned with my goals. So I was like, “Okay, this isn't gonna last and this really supplemented my income. So, I need to look for a job where I'm making this kind of income continually or more.” So, that's what it set things in motion for. Where I'm currently working, I'm making more than what I was bringing home when I was receiving MMT. I had my job plus the MMY Money. So, it kind of shifted my thinking.

And, being an interviewer, that was also a good experience, especially the training. It was so fun and I appreciated that they let us kind of shift how they ask the questions based on us knowing our community and the other moms around us and how they would take the questions or how sometimes they may be offended by the way the question is asked. So, I appreciate them even letting us shift how the questions were asked and it was real intriguing. It was a really good experience, the working as the interviewer.

And then I liked, also, that I got to hear other moms’ perspective. Like, this was my experience when I was receiving it and this is theirs, and there are so many commonalities. And then there were other things that were different. I was like, “Oh, I could of…” and it kind of offered different perspectives and perceptions on ways that I could have did things different or things I even changed moving forward. And, like I said, we had a lot in common. Most of them wanted the same thing. And then, I also appreciated that our story would be told different than what's been perceived or was told outside of us, like the idea of what moms – who are on low-income or who receive government assistance or any type of funding – what they think that we're doing with the money is different than what they actually think…we're basically family-based in wanting to achieve more, wanting to grow. And most of them were using it to supplement income that they already had.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thank you so much.

Tamika Calhoun | she/her | MMT Alumna & Evaluation Advisor: You're welcome.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: I'm hearing you talking about like what you found valuable about this experience, and I'd also love to hear from the rest of the team, the rest of the panelists. What did you personally find valuable about being a part of this evaluation project and working with MMT?

Sashana Rowe-Harriott | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: I'll jump in here. I found several things valuable. On top of mind is the opportunity to kind of build relationships with the moms. I think because our methods were longitudinal in nature, just like always having to communicate with the moms. I think, even being a part of the process of training the alumni moms. Also, it's like you get to…I look at it as like being able to be a fly on the wall but also being able to take up space, too, right. ‘Cause there's this…I think about how like traditional ways of like evaluating stuff, it's like, you're this like impartial, objective person that's there. But you know there’s this…this kind of work allowed us to really like you said, Zuri, “Research is not neutral.”

And, I think being able to want to see folks win, to want to see the moms, you know, benefit from this program to also want MMT as a program to be serving the moms as best as possible, being able to lift up the needs of the moms, the stories of the moms, the highlights, the joy, and being able to witness that was just extremely valuable to me,and made me realize what kind of work that I want to do. And it's like really being there like in the meat of the matter, not just being like this “I'm just here observing.” No, but also like being a part of it. Having skin in the game. I think not very many projects allow for that kind of involvement and I really enjoyed that that was a benefit for me for working on this project.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: I love that. Anyone else want to add?

Jamela Clark | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: I can hop in. I think, so far as was shared, like this cohort we're doing case study. So it's a series of four interviews, two in-person visits, two interviews virtually, in addition to quarterly letter writing. And so, whereas the letter writing itself is like a part of our qualitative data collection, the way we navigate the letters with the moms is a bit more intimate, where we sit and we act as a sounding board with the moms. And, for me, it's just such a deep honor that as the letters progress, and the moms know that we're reading it, the more they share and the more of themselves that they open up and hold space for us in their lives is so moving.

And, I think, to Sarah's point, like, it makes things more rich. It makes things more meaningful and tangible when it's time to disseminate more broadly with what is happening in the program because you put life into it. You put breath into it. And I think just that piece in and of itself combined with, like, getting to know the moms over the course of almost 9 months, I think… babies have been born! Like, it's just, you know… it's really like leaving that space of neutrality, as mentioned, and feeling like this is creating change and I get to witness how people's lives are changing as a part of this. And so, that in and of itself has just been very transformative for me.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thank you. Thank you so much for that reflection. Speaking of dissemination of reports, I am really curious, Sarah, to hear more about how does the MMT project and Springboard to Opportunities actually use this, these beautiful reports that have been done? How to use them to advocate for guaranteed income?

Sarah Stripp | she/her | MMT Program Director: Yeah. So, two big things come to mind with that. So, first, it really allows us to be able to tell that bigger story of guaranteed income and come at a lot of the questions that we have. So, I think one of the biggest pushbacks that you'll hear against guaranteed income is like, “Well, what happens to people after the money stops?” Or, like, “You know, you can't do this forever” whatever that looks like. And, if you're just measuring it in purely economic terms, right, and saying, like. you know, are people getting the same amount of cash every month, or whatever, like, no, you can't make a case for that. But, when you have sort of this larger story talking about the changes in self-advocacy and agency, and parent’s ability to feel like they're a good parent, to recognize their own self worth, like that becomes so valuable.

So, particularly some of these longitudinal studies that we've done and being able to say like what happens after the program and, also, like what shifts are happening for their kids after the program has ended have really allowed us to share their story and say again, like, there's other shifts happening here besides just someone having a thousand dollars more in their bank account every month. And, what does that mean and what does that look like. But, also having these stories has allowed us to really influence larger policy pieces, too.

So, even though our kind of North Star and goal always is going to be, you know, having a federal guaranteed income program that encompasses the whole country, like we know that that is something that's in the future, but what can we do to make small steps towards that and making our policies today like more inclusive, thinking more about families, and and becoming more trust-based. So, for example, one of the big things that kept coming up in the studies that we've had…So, the families that we work with live in federal housing, so income affects how much they pay in rent every month. And so, we continue to have this issue where we, you know, we'd give them the money, but their rent would go up and it was a difficult thing to kind of navigate for families, even though you know they were still having a net gain. But it still just became complicated, especially if certain property managers took like several months to be able to process that and then they’d owe back rent and, you know, this kept coming up in the evaluations and we knew that this was a larger policy issue that we wanted to see change.

And, there were already some things in place with HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, through a rule called HOTMA (Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act) which was gonna shift the way that that income calculation was happening. And, we were able to advocate, along with some of our other folks who are guaranteed income partners, to make sure that they put out a really specific explainer that said very clearly from them like “guaranteed income payments that are happening for 12 months or less like need to be excluded from folks’ rent and shouldn't be counted.” And that was a huge, huge win for us and for families to be able to like have that shift happen because, again, it gave them more cash but also it was able to recognize…we were able to take those stories, right, like the research that had happened and say “This is not working and this is actually hindering, like, some of the progress that we're trying to make and show through this.” And, you know, in some states you could get waivers and you know there are all these kind of different complicated things. But, to be able to have a federal rule come down and say like this is no longer an option was huge and so we were really, really excited about stuff like that.

And, also, when we think of other policies like TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), our CEO, Aisha Nyandoro, was invited this past summer to testify on a House panel about some of the rules and regulations around TANF and creating a stronger federal landscape there so that states don't have as much control over how they're spending their block grants, because, when you get into states like Mississippi, oftentimes those funds are not given to families as cash, and they're spent on kind of pet projects. And, you know, we could go down a whole long rabbit hole about TANF, but just Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or cash welfare here in the United States. And, you know, she was able to take the stories again, like from that evaluation, and offer those stories as like the proof and the really strong… it just was so much better data to be able to offer the stories of families at a testimony panel like that as opposed to just kind of like coming in with a bunch of statistics and numbers which folks had already heard,

And, same thing. So, the Office of Family Assistance which is under Health and Human Services has actually…they're working on kind of setting up these new regulations around TANF and asked us, like, very specifically to respond to an RFI (request for information) to talk about, like, what is needed. And, again, we were able to take these stories from families, like, pull right from these data reports, to say, like, this is what happens when you get families cash, like this is what happens when you're shifting to a larger trust-based social safety net system. And I think, to be able to do that, it's just so much more powerful than to come in, again, with, like, all your kind of nit picky like policy stuff, but be able to kind of have, like, some sort of refreshing thing to say, like, “What if we just think about this system in a new way and think about how we're doing this differently?” and “This is what we're actually hearing family say when that happens.” So, we've been really excited about the way we've been able to use these larger reports, both for the guaranteed income movement but I think just generally in the way that we're talking about social safety net services and supporting families.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Hmm. Thank you so much. Oh, such a powerful project. I'm so proud of everyone. And we're gonna go into Q&A in just a moment. So, if you all in the audience want to start pressing that Q&A button and putting in your questions, you can. But, I just wanna close with this question, how do you feel like this project embodies liberatory research in action? And anyone can answer.

Tamika Calhoun | she/her | MMT Alumna & Evaluation Advisor: I'll answer. I feel like it embodies that because it changes, it really changes the narrative on what's being said about moms and people who receive income the way that we did or like TANF. They think that we’re…I've heard that they think that we're lazy, that we don't work, and, by asking the questions the way that they're asked, it lets the moms tell their story to show, “No, this isn't what you think it is. This isn't that. And this is actually what's going on.” So yeah, thank you. That’s it. I'm sorry. I’m at work.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: That's all right. Thank you, Tamika!

Nidal Karim | she/they | Social Insights Evaluation Team: I'll jump in to piggyback on what Tamika shared ‘cause that's kind of the direction in which my thoughts were going. I feel like one of the parts from this project that really, to me, feels like liberatory research in action is how, you know what Sarah said about there's these narratives and, to Tamika’s point, shifting the narrative. And, I feel that because, both being able to be working on this project across several cohorts, one of the beautiful things we were able to do is create…not create, but lift up the alternative narratives which is the real narratives, right, that are not these harmful narratives. And, also, to create frames around it that policymakers hopefully can understand. The one thing that really stands out to me is, there were two areas where we were hearing stories from moms and one of the main things in every cohort that we would see is when the guaranteed income program starts, a lot of moms would share about being able to have a birthday party for their children, or go on a trip, or like, go to Chucky Cheese and in the in the harmful frame this would be seen as “frivolous,” right. I say that in quotes.

However, for us, it was really important to see this is what moms share is like what was bringing them joy as parents. And then, by the third cohort, being able to have data where we were then being able to speak to saying “How does exposure to different places link to children's social capital” and then pulling in research that already exists talking about how social capital shift means that it actually increases economic mobility in the long term, right. So, it's that kind of being able to really center the moms voices and then also think in that bigger picture of what does this mean and how can we kind of articulate this narrative that is there so that some of those folks who are not always…who have these ideas about what this is, that we can try to shift how they're thinking about it and that what they consider frivolous is absolutely not frivolous and and that every child and every family deserves all of those things and has a right to it.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much. Oh, sorry, Sashana. Go ahead.

Sashana Rowe-Harriott | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: No worries. I also wanted to lift up, in terms of process, how we kind of invited, like, a power sharing in terms of, you know, we have our own interpretations of what the data said, right. But also, like, inviting folks like Tamika and, I think, Kadija to look at what we framed and put together and, like, let us know if we're reflecting what you know we're supposed to be doing, right. It's kind of really keeping expertise at bay and like sharing that because at the end of the day we're trying to translate these stories to a larger audience and we needed to be true to what we're lifting up. And so, like, I think, building that into the process was liberatory research in action for me as well.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Well said. Well said. Thank you so much. Anything else before we jump into the Q&A from our panelists?

Christyl Wilson Ebba | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: I added my piece to the chat for sake of time but I can say it out loud just really quickly. What resonated with me as being a liberatory approach was the level of trust involved. We've all mentioned this in different ways, but you know we are trained researchers, and some of us came straight from academia, we have expertise, like we have skills and knowledge, but we are not the experts. In terms of the type of information that we're trying to get, we don't have this lived experience. And so, just the level of trust to know that people know what they want, people know how to tell their own story, they already have the power. Like even, we talk about how using the word “empowering” is kind of problematic because they have power, we're just amplifying their power, amplifying their voice. I’mma stop ‘cause I'll start on a rant because it's so exciting. Yeah, that’s what rang true to me as part of being liberatory and really infusing, like, freedom into research, this kind of stuffy – sometimes – process.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thank you. Thank you. Yes, yes, absolutely. I think MMT is a beautiful example of this in practice. And, I would love for us to all take a collective, deep breath of gratitude before we move on to our Q&A just to close this beautiful conversation out. So let’s just all pause for a minute. Maybe get yourself comfortable, relax your shoulders, and soften your gaze. And, let's all just take a deep inhale and a slow exhale.

Thank you. Alright. So we're gonna hear from the audience and the panel is going to do their best to answer your questions and curiosities. The first question that we have is, would you be able to share more about your data analysis process? How did you take all of that rich qualitative data and translate that into findings for a report? So, anyone can answer or multiple people can answer because it was a group effort to do all of this data analysis.

Nidal Karim | she/they | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Perhaps Sashana and I can speak to the first year where we probably had the biggest volume of qualitative data. We were excited. Let's just say that that's what it was. We were very excited and, then, as I said earlier, we iterated the next time around, right. So, one of our lessons was, you can have too much data. That is absolutely possible. And so, our first year we were doing monthly pulse check ins that included the photovoice prompt and then another prompt. So, these were little short answers and pictures and then we did, I believe, it was 12 interviews and a focus group. I might be mixing some of it up. Sashana, does that sound right?

Sashana Rowe-Harriott | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: So, no focus group for the first.

Nidal Karim | she/they | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Okay. Okay, yeah. Yeah. We did not have. Yes, and what we learned from that one was, it was really critical that we stay up with analysis every month and that every month was too frequent. So, that's part of, again, you do it and you learn it. We did not know how many of the moms would respond and we were actually getting a really high response rate. And so, it was a lot of data. So, once we realized that, the next time around with the second year that we were doing this, we shifted to every other month, and we also thought, instead of doing the large volume of interviews we did, we shifted to a focus group and we did two focus groups.

And that year, we were also doing the alumni study, so we were gathering a lot of data from alumni via interviews. So, some of it was kind of like doing it and learning. In terms of actual analysis we did for our interviews, we ended up using Dedoose, which is a qualitative analysis software, and then for the shorter pieces we organized within Airtable and Google Sheets. And, what we found – and, Sashana, like stop me or jump in as you want to. What we found is, for the data that was coming in every other month, we also built in, for that second year, small reports that we would send to Springboard every two data collections. So, that helped us because what we were doing is analyzing along the way, summarizing, writing it up, and giving something to Springboard every three months, and that way, by the time we got to the end of the year, the bulk of that ongoing data was already analyzed and written up and we were just then focusing more on the focus group data to add that and complement what we had been doing through the year. But I'll…Sashana, do you wanna add to that.

Sashana Rowe-Harriott | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: No, just to reiterate. I think when we're collecting that like that initial year that large volume, right. I think a learning on our end was that we could not be analyzing at the end, right. And so, like building in analyzing ongoing was what was really key because I think when we waited that long there was just like a lot of things that could have been missed just because of the sheer volume. So, I think being able to kind of build out like the key themes along the way was very helpful and manageable overall.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thanks so much, y’all, Another question that is related to that. Scott, thank you. I think you've pretty much answered it, but Scott says, “Thanks to all the panelists for sharing your insights. I'd love to hear more about the time and energy that's required for this type of approach.” So, you all definitely are speaking specifically to the qualitative but there also was a quantitative part to this work, as well as travel. And, maybe you all want to say more about the time and the energy or the approach.

Sashana Rowe-Harriott | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Nidal.

Nidal Karim | she/they | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Sashana. No, no, no! Go ahead! Go ahead!

Sashana Rowe-Harriott | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: Well, it takes a lot of time. But, it's really, truly a labor of love. I think, in terms of the time and energy, it was a lot. It felt like it was a good exhaustion, though, I will say just because I think we have to do justice to these mom stories. We have to do justice to this work. It's an amazing, amazing project and, I think, being able to hear in real time how moms have, you know, been able to benefit, been able to draw from community to dream, to see things like come to fruition – it's time, energy, well spent. I think it was important for us to kind of build in rest and to make this work sustainable.

So, I think, for example, like coming back from our data collection like episodes whenever we did some things in person, like, you know, easing our way back into the work week was something that we were able to do, as well. I mean, if we're trying to shift how we do research, right, and lift up folks’ experience in ways that honor them, right, and that's like not extractive and all those things, that it does take some reimagining of what work would look like, and so like building in…I think, for me, personally building in moments of rest, being able to kind of set up good boundaries in terms of work hours was something that helped me along the way.

But, understanding that with this work there needs to be some amount of flexibility on your end, too, right. Developing relationships with the moms meant that sometimes…’cause like one of the things that came up for us, too, was that moms really…is conflated the word? Conflated us with Springboard and so, like, I would be getting messages if there is some resources that they need and so, like, you are really building relationships with the participants. And so, just understanding that this comes with the nature of the job – which, for me, I loved it. Nidal, I don't know if you have anything to add.

Nidal Karim | she/they | Social Insights Evaluation Team: I love what you shared, Sashana. All I would add is, we're saying we're doing liberatory work which means that our liberation is tied into this work. And so, to your point, I think, one, is this is not – as Zuri said in the beginning – this is not for us to do alone. This is not a one person job. I feel that what we benefited from is we had a team and that holding our team in space and really – to Sashana’s point – figuring out who needed to step in, step out because there are moments in which it can be a lot of time that you're putting in. And so, some of it was just us learning that and then understanding how we, as a team, could support each other so that we were also taking care of ourselves along the way.

And then, every next iteration learning from the past one and making adjustments. So saying, “Hey, actually, when we did it this way, it was a little overwhelming. What can we adjust in order to make this work next time better?” Like, we need support around scheduling, so we brought in other folks to help the team around scheduling. So, it's that kind of, again, continuing to iterate and knowing that, whatever you think you need going in, you're gonna need more. And to know that that's okay. Like, what we're doing isn't just evaluation, it's liberatory work. So, it is gonna take more. So, we kind of have to be okay with that.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Yes, thank you so much. Such powerful answers and reflections about the multi-layered nature of doing a project like this and going into it knowing that it's not just about checking some things off, giving a report to a client, and walking away. This is not that type of project. And, I think something that was really unique was that every single person that touched this project, both the people who are still here and who are not, brought their full selves to it. They brought their heart to it. They brought their gifts to it and that, I think, made it really special, as well.

We have a question about, “How did the research team determine the number of moms involved in each cohort?” And, there's also some curiosity from Tesha about theories that were utilized, the theoretical frameworks that were employed in the research process.

Sarah Stripp | she/her | MMT Program Director: Well, I mean, I could take the question about determining the number of folks ‘cause that's on our end every year and it comes down to funding. Like, that's the short answer. Like, I think if we could, you know, have a 500 person cohort, we would love to have a 500 person cohort, but, you know, we can only do what we have the funding to do and that we're able to. I think also sticking around 100 tends to make it a pretty manageable number, I think, for the team and for us as like a program team to be able to to manage and take care of. You know, cause we also…like our payroll team is pushing out this money to folks every month and you know things like that. And so, there's kind of all these different considerations we have to take into account. But, generally speaking, with the level of funding that we get, that makes sense.

And, I know someone else had asked the question about receiving funding and the ability to flexibly do that and what that looks like. So, just to kind of touch on that while we're here. I think it's something that, like, philanthropy is becoming much more open to. When we started The Magnolia Mother's Trust in 2018 there was no openness to that and the money that we gave out in stipends was 100% from private individual donors who chose to remain anonymous for the first two years. That was really what we were giving out, from people who knew us and believed in the program and believed in our moms, which was really cool to see happen. But, especially at that point, most funders they could fund like the research, right. So, we had a funder who could fund the research around this or who could fund some of the additional, like, social supports that we were giving to families but could not fund the direct cash stipends.

But that has really changed. We've seen just huge shifts in how people, and particularly philanthropy, has been thinking about cash and giving folks cash over the last four years, particularly since COVID started, which is really exciting, and I hope will continue to happen. I think, just as we have wanted to create more trust-based relationships with our families, I think there are at least certain parts of philanthropy that are moving towards having more trust-based relationships with the folks that they fund and wanting to say, you know, “Y'all do what you gotta do with this and we trust you make the best choices.” And so, we hope that movement keeps growing.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thanks, Sarah. Thanks, Jada, for the question, and, Tessa, for the question. Sheila was asking “What were some of the things you were able to accomplish with liberatory research that you feel wouldn't have been accomplished using traditional research techniques?”

Jamela Clark | she/her | Social Insights Evaluation Team: I can jump in. Oh, Nidal, are you ready? Did you want…? I can hop in, and, then, if you want to follow up. But, I'll share. It goes back to what Sarah said earlier. A lot of times when, not just guaranteed income programming but any program that is looking at financial investment and folks who have been historically othered, it's always this narrative of “What is kind of pathological to a group that has been in this space of othering and is this financial input going to make a difference?” And so, because of that, researchers are pushed to look at heavy quantitative findings and life experiences are sometimes not quantifiable. They can be shared in the form of story and narrative and there's, you know, ways that those can be quantified, sure – depending on how many people you talk to. However, we know that funding does not necessarily expand for us to talk to every single last person who is going to participate in programming.

And so, what I think what a liberatory approach helps us do is really dismantle these expectations that everything has to be quantified in order to see change, that change is not this linear thing that if I do A and add it to B, I'm going to get C. It's more complicated and curved and spirally. And what really matters is is getting to the point where, at the end of the story, someone can share how their life has been changed. And, to Nidal’s point, that's also on our end. We change as researchers. We change how we ask questions, investigate, and inquire. And, at least for me personally, I want to see my voice and opinion fade into the back and the voice of those who are at the center of intrigue, I suppose, be risen to the top.

And so, I believe that what comes out of this is what Sarah mentioned, is real change – even at the policy level. Yes, there's these long term things that we hope to see happen that creates a more equitable world for us all, but these tiny little baby steps that leads to the sustainability of that change, I believe, is something that liberatory approaches help us achieve. And, I'll pass it over to Nidal.

Nidal Karim | she/they | Social Insights Evaluation Team: You said it all, Jamela. There's nothing to add.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thank you so much. Lots of gratitude in the chat. And we are so grateful to this amazing group. So grateful that you all are sharing your brilliance and tenacity. And, especially grateful that, Tamika, you made the time to join us while juggling work and multiple things today.

I'm going to pass to Miko, our community manager. We're gonna have a little bit of time for you to engage in some feedback and evaluation of this experience so that we can continue to create these community spaces with you in mind, as well. So, Miko.

Miko Brown | Miko/Miko’s | Admin & Community Engagement Manager: Yes, absolutely. We are so grateful that you all joined us here today, and we would love to hear more from you about your experience of the webinar, as well as to hear what you're interested in from future webinars that we might hold. So, I'm gonna drop a feedback form in the chat here, and, if you could take 5 minutes here as we approach the hour to fill that out, we would really appreciate it. And so, we'll just take a moment here. Might play a little music in the background. But, we would really be grateful for your feedback, so thank you for taking the time.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Thank you so much, Miko. Also, one thing to note about our background music is that this playlist was curated by our last liberatory research cohort so shout out to a few of y'all who are on this call. It's great to see you. So, yes, this is a quick little, probably less than 5 minutes to give your thoughts. So we're just gonna stay here together, and when you're done with the form you can log out.Thank you, again.

Time is given for attendees to complete the feedback form.

Dr. Zuri Tau | she/her | Social Insights & LR Founder: Alright, everyone. It’s one o'clock. We did it. It's been a beautiful, beautiful morning and afternoon, wherever you are. Have a great weekend.