AN INTERVIEW WITH KAREN NEMSICK

What is Women In Action?
Women In Action provides outdoor learning opportunities to women that teach teamwork and communication skills and build confidence. Our primary purpose in providing these opportunities is to help women move from welfare dependency to self-sufficiency.

How do outdoor learning activities promote economic self-sufficiency? How did you make the connection between outdoor or experiential learning, increased self-esteem and economic self-sufficiency?
Experiential learning is a tried and tested means of confidence and leadership skills. There have also been a lot of studies establishing the link between high self-esteem and the willingness to take risks. People who challenge themselves, who venture outside their "comfort zones" are more likely to move up in their careers, become successful in their business and personal lives.

Programs like Outward Bound are regularly used for youth and adults to challenge individuals and to teach teamwork skills. Corporations also use experiential learning opportunities to build staff rapport and efficiency.

All of the above ideas led me to plan a program that could provide similar learning experiences to women who were transitioning into the work field, either for the first time or after a long hiatus from work. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 pressed thousands of women into the work force and encouraged the creation of hundreds of job training programs to prepare them for this transition.

The job training programs are great at providing students with the hard skills they need to get a job. Women In Action addresses the interpersonal skills students need to KEEP a job - leadership, risk-taking, high self-esteem.

Why not just send job-training students on an Outward Bound type adventure?
A host of cultural and economic barriers make a typical wilderness experience inaccessible to low-income women, particularly those from an urban environment. First of all, wilderness programs are expensive and take place miles from cities. They are multi-day trips that many women with children cannot attend due to childcare issues. There is a certain level of physical fitness required. Finally, there are cultural issues to be overcome. Many of our participants come from communities where outdoor activities aren't considered the preferred means of entertainment.

Women In Action's unique proposition is that we can provide the same results as a wilderness activity through local programs that take the above barriers into account. Our activities are held in local parks or at recreational areas that are accessible by public transportation. They occur during the day, when most women have childcare established. Although our activities are personally challenging, women of almost any physical condition can participate.

And by participating as a group, from their job-training program, they are supported by a multi-cultural perspective where they can share their hesitations or preconceived notions with other women who may feel similarly. Likewise, as a social worker with many years of experience with multi-cultural populations, I can lead activities with sensitivity to the potential concerns of particular ethnic groups.

What are your results?
Since 10/99, 70 women from three job-training programs participated in 14 activities. One of the determinants of success of our program is increased confidence and self esteem. Although we have subjective feedback from our participants, we're still working on creating an evaluation plan that will measure these results in a concrete manner.

We recently engaged a graduate-level social work student to do a program evaluation for Women In Action over the next 10 months. Through surveys, questionnaires and interviews, she will create a picture of the program that will show results and give us information on how to direct the program for the future. It will be a challenge for us to determine the success of our program in terms of job retention and self-sufficiency.

What challenges have you faced?
Our biggest challenge is funding. As a nonprofit, we rely on voluntary grants and donations to support our work, so each year's income is somewhat unpredictable. The changing economic environment impacts giving trends for individuals, foundations and corporations.

In tight financial times, we've had to focus on smaller donations from individuals and scale back on our expectations of support from corporate sponsors. For example, this year we're expanding our local fundraising activities, and while we continue to solicit grants from foundations, our expectations of corporate funding have been scaled back.

Similarly, as job-training programs feel the same limitations in their funding, they may be less able to pay the sliding fees that Women In Action charges, which can preclude their participation. I'd like to be able to offer the first Women In Action activities for a nominal fee, in anticipation that the impact of the activity on program participants will encourage our partners to find the funding to continue using WIA activities as part of their curriculum

What have you learned?
The biggest lesson is that I cannot set the bar high enough for the women I work with. Even with my experience working with at-risk populations, I started out with lower expectations of what the groups would be willing to do. For example, when I decided to try taking a group on a ropes course, I assumed that the younger participants would be most likely to actually get up on the high elements and I would engage the older women to be "ground support."

What I've seen are grandmothers and middle-aged women pushing themselves to get up their to show their grown children, their peers, the younger girls what they can do! And very often, the students get up on the course and show more confidence than their teachers from their training programs!

As I develop the curriculum for our next year, I'm maintaining the same level of physical challenge, but I'm incorporating more motivational ideas/discussions into our days. This summer we started talking about our passions in life, and how we can find a career that allows us to also pursue our passions. At the beginning of the year, I would have thought this discussion to be superfluous - after all, we're talking about just getting a job and getting off welfare. But after meeting and talking with over 45 women about work, life and career, it became apparent that this is an important issue.

We all have passions in life. For some of us, we work hard during the week so we can indulge in our passions during the weekend. For others, our work is the thing that brings us fulfillment. In either case, having that passion is what motivates us to do our jobs and do them well. Isn't this an important lesson to learn when you're just beginning a job?

What's next?
We want to expand the program throughout the Bay Area over the next 12 months. While I continue to do outreach to the many private job-training programs from San Francisco to San Jose, I'm also talking to the PeninsulaWorks program of the San Mateo County Human Services Agency. PeninsulaWorks has over 600 job-seeking clients on their caseloads that may be eligible to participate in WIA activities.

To increase the number of activities we provide, I need to hire a part-time activities leader who will be trained to facilitate the day-long activities. A graduate level student in Recreation & Leisure studies or Social Work would be a preferred candidate.

With an activities leader on staff, I can devote more time to creating effective partnerships with job-training programs. The biggest challenge to these partnerships is financial. I'm encouraging our potential partners to work with us to write grants and funding requests that will enable them to participate In Women In Action activities.

What can people do to help Women In Action?
Volunteer - Our teamwork days in local parks are a great way to lend a hand and get a first-hand look at how Women In Action activities improve self-esteem and communication skills. We're also looking for in-kind assistance with marketing, press releases, database development, and fundraising.

Donate: Women In Action operates on a shoestring. Every dime helps us out. To give you an idea of how far your donation goes, last year we served 50 women on 10 different activities on a budget of 24,000. You can make an individual donation, ask your company to make a matching gift, or get friends together to make a group gift.

Tell a friend: do you know anyone who would be interested in learning more about Women In Action? Friends, work groups, church groups, professional organizations? Direct them to our website for information, or call me at 415-412-7617.

-Karen Nemsick

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