Navigate NOLA remains committed to enhancing the emotional intelligence of our most vulnerable youth. We firmly believe that social-emotional learning interventions in schools with young, low-income, minority children are an effective way to address disparities created by historically racial discriminatory practices and historically racial injustices that exacerbate the vulnerability of children of color, resulting in inequities across education. Check out our policy brief to learn more about social-emotional learning, its effectiveness, and how Navigate NOLA can serve as a resource, on multiple levels, to establishing systemic integration of social-emotional learning in schools.
The Collaborative for African-American Girls and Women is a collective group of organizations that serve African-American adolescent girls in the city of New Orleans, led by African-American women. Our collective impact report provides data that supports that participation in gender-based programs, that seek to meet the unique needs of African-American adolescent girls, enhances the overall well-being of this population. The report also elevates the hard work of organizations that are grossly underfunded (or not funded at all) and remain committed to meeting the needs of African-American girls.
Early Childhood Adverse Experiences: how common are ACEs among young children who attend Head Start Centers in New Orleans?
This data was collected and analyzed by Navigate NOLA, the childhood wellbeing division of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Inc. The need for this data collection was identified as a priority by the New Orleans Infant Mental Health Collaborative, a group of organizations committed to promoting early childhood mental health and social emotional wellbeing in the city. The Collaborative includes representation from Head Start and Early Head Start Center directors, local government, public health practitioners, and educators. In partnership with two Head Start Centers, Navigate NOLA anonymously surveyed parents about their children's exposure to adverse experiences in the home and the community.*
The Collaborative for African-American Girls & Women (CAAGW) released recommendations, prepared by Navigate NOLA, to help schools and communities create non-punitive, nondiscriminatory, spaces of healing for Black girls, and girls of color. In response to this critical moment in time, characterized by the Coronavirus pandemic and the eruption of anti-black racism and bias in the form of global civil unrest, the CAAGW conducted a virtual healing circle for adolescent black girls, led by Dr. Rashida Govan. Understanding that collective and historical traumas, as a result of deep-seated inequities, require collective healing across groups with shared identities, CAAGW convened a group of adolescent black girls that are part of various community-based organizations that serve black girls and are doing transformative work to combat intersectional erasures. The following organizations participated: • Project Butterfly New Orleans • The Beautiful Foundation • The Orchid Society • Daughters Beyond Incarceration • Navigate NOLA