Grow your Capacity: Free Legal Advice, Using HistoryPin to Tell Your Story and More

Every week we share a list of tools, resources, events and suggested reading that can help you build your organization or campaign. Many thanks to Susie Cambria for her assistance with this list.

Local Events

Chesapeake Herb Gathering

Calling all gardeners, farmers, herbalists: workshop proposals sought for Chesapeake Herb Gathering in September 2018: The annual Chesapeake Herb Gathering brings together “inter-generational herbal, land-based, and healing communities to elebrate our stories, our knowledge, our culture and traditions.” The weekend of September 22-23 will be filled with “workshops, plant walks, youth activities, community artwork, social justice, artisans market, campfire, and community connections with local herbalists, teachers, clinicians, healers, botanists, farmers, birthkeepers, medicine makers, rootworkers, artists, homesteaders, community organizations and much more!”

Event organizer Centro Ashé has put the call out for workshop proposals; they are due March 31. They are looking for creative, engaging, and inclusive learning opportunities. That can mean “practical skills, youth activities, herbalism, farming, seedsaving, story telling, decolonizing the healing arts, plant walks, to theory.” All teachers attend the weekend for free.

Learn more about the event; watch the video below from Chesapeake Herb Gathering 2017.

Free Legal Advice Clinic

Save the date: Free Legal Advice Clinic, April 14: Low-income Wards 7 and 8 residents, along with others from across the city, can get free legal advice at the DC Bar Pro Bono Center’s Free Legal Advice Clinic Saturday, April 21 from 10:00 am to Noon at Bread for the City (1640 Good Hope Rd SE; Green line to Anacostia, Bus B2 or W6).

Individuals living on low incomes can meet one-on-one with an attorney for free legal advice on any civil legal matter governed by DC or federal law such as bankruptcy and debt collection, employment law, family law, and public benefits (SSDI/SSI, etc.). Important things to know about the event:

  • Bring all of the documents concerning your legal problem to the Clinic.

  • Interpreters are available by calling the Legal Information Help Line, (202) 626-3499. After selecting your language, press 5 for all other inquiries, press 3 for information about the free legal clinic, and then press 9 to leave a message with the information requested.

See the flyers in English and Spanish for additional information about the event.

Webinar on Women in Advocacy and Politics

DC Civic Action Center - There is workshop webinar on women in advocacy and politics. The workshop will be from 8:30am to 3:30pm.  There will be five workshops that cover topics such as: advocacy 101, fundraising for advocates, campaign strategy 101 exploring career for women in politics and campaign finance 101. To learn more about this workshop please sign up here

Ward 7 and 8 Community Calendar

The Neighborhood Legal Service is providing a workers rights clinic on Friday, March 16 from 12pm -3pm at 2811 Pennsylvania Ave SE. The clinics intake will be on from 12pm -3pm. The Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs would like for everyone attending to “schedule an appointment before. Walk-ins may be accepted if there is space available.” 

Tools and Resources

  • Historypin is an online storytelling tool which combines photographs, stories (remembrances), and videos for individuals, organizations, and communities to use and others to learn from. Historypin is free to use and comes with resources guides and FAQs. Existing content can be re-used in new and old collections, adding to the group and collaborative feel of the maps and galleries. Free and paid.
  • Looking for yet another free photo site? Check out Reshot. Unlike other free image sites, Reshot lets you download groups of photos—packs—in one fell swoop. All you have to do is Tweet. Free.
  • Social Media Examiner delivers again with 3 Easy-to-Use Motion Graphics Tools for Marketers. Explicit instructions are provided. . . yay!
  • If your organization uses or is interested in using social media, read Social Media Use in 2018. Writes Pew,

Facebook and YouTube dominate this landscape, as notable majorities of U.S. adults use each of these sites. At the same time, younger Americans (especially those ages 18 to 24) stand out for embracing a variety of platforms and using them frequently. Some 78% of 18- to 24-year-olds use Snapchat, and a sizeable majority of these users (71%) visit the platform multiple times per day. Similarly, 71% of Americans in this age group now use Instagram and close to half (45%) are Twitter users.

At work

  • Tamarack Institute's March edition of Engage! is full of super-useful articles including An Action Plan to Build Community Readiness featuring the new paper Ready, Set Go: Building Readiness for Collaborative and Community Impact, Cultivating the Power of Residents to Build Community: Lessons from Kitchener, and Investing to Create a Network of Community Change Agents - A Case Study.
  • Dividing Lines: Why Is Internet Access Still Considered a Luxury in America?, Tuesday, March 27 at Noon, streaming: Berkman Klein Project Coordinator Maria Smith will discuss the "seeming universality" of internet access in the US and her multi-part documentary about the political and economic underpinnings of the disparity. Free.

Learn something

Manufactured homes are an important source of unsubsidized affordable homeownership: the resident owns their unit and leases the land beneath it from a landowner. However, many manufactured home communities have been recently displaced when park owners sell increasingly valuable land to developers.

In some states, "Opportunity to Purchase" legislation allows manufactured housing residents the right to purchase communities and secure housing, stability, and the chance to build home equity for the residents. While this legislation can be a powerful tool for residents to purchase their communities, the law varies across states in terms of protection and enforcement.

Join our webinar on Tuesday, March 20 from 1:30-2:30pm EDT to learn more about threats to the wealth-building potential of manufactured housing, explore the opportunities and challenges presented by "Opportunity to Purchase" legislation, and hear an example of how residents in Massachusetts benefitted from this legislation to purchase their own community. We’ll also have plenty of time for your questions!

  • The best of 46 Free Nonprofit Webinars for March 2018 from March 16-31: Introduction to Fundraising Planning (March 21); Small Nonprofit Web Design: Converting Interest into Action (March 21); and What Nonprofit CFOs Need to Know about the New FASB Regulations (March 28).

Good read

Obituary writing is more about life than death: the last word, a testament to a human contribution.

Yet who gets remembered — and how — inherently involves judgment. To look back at the obituary archives can, therefore, be a stark lesson in how society valued various achievements and achievers.

Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries: of heads of state, opera singers, the inventor of Stove Top stuffing and the namer of the Slinky. The vast majority chronicled the lives of men, mostly white ones; even in the last two years, just over one in five of our subjects were female.

Who did the Times leave out? Charlotte Brontë and Ida B. Wells among others.

Thanks for reading. Check back next week for more resources. 

Building Capacity, Capacity BuildingAnacostia Park and Community Collaborative