Meditation + Magical Thinking: How a 16-Month Program Helped Me Reimagine the Future of Journalism
How I used engagement methods to serve caregivers of people with autism in Newmark’s Social Journalism program at the City University of New York
I’m Ariam (pn: Ah-ree-ahm) and I spent the past year-and-a-half using my journalism education and background, advocacy work, and interpersonal skills to support the emotional and informational needs of caregivers of people with autism and other disabilities. I worked with a diverse group of families who are intimately impacted by the autism spectrum disorder and over time, I understood that people in this community are resilient, compassionate and loving.
Forty-two percent of adults who care for at least one person said they want information about managing their own stress in a 2015 report by AARP’s “Caregiving in the U.S.” Another survey produced in February 2019 by The Arc and the National Center for Children in Poverty titled Disability Perspectives on Paid Leave interviewed caregivers in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, and California about their perspectives on the paid family leave benefit which, by law, allows employees in these states to take time off work, receive a percentage of their salary, and keep their job while caring for a new, ill, or aging family member or their own health. Sixty-two percent of the caregivers — 90 percent of whom identify as parents — said they have taken a leave of absence for “a few days” to care for a sick or disabled family member compared to only 25 percent who said they have taken a few days off work to tend to their own needs.
This is not a world I want to live in. I want to live in a world where everyone, especially caregivers, understands that they deserve care too and prioritize self-care.
In September of 2019, when I returned to the Social Journalism program at the Newmark J-School and laid out my engagement plan for the term ahead, I had ambitiously declared that I’d produced at least three educational and social wellness-themed events for caregivers to learn how to manage their stress using different therapy techniques as well as creating an immersive piece of storytelling centering the emotional hardships of their lives. For the former goal, I knew I wanted to partner with a caregiver and as time passed, I realized that the goal of creating three events wasn’t feasible for members of the community but it still mattered that I had a partner to co-create an event with.
Using Virtual Reality to Create an Immersive Storytelling Experience for Caregivers
I spent the majority of my final semester experimenting with immersive technologies as part of a 2-credit Independent Study Virtual Reality module with Matt MacVey who is the academic program specialist for the school’s emerging tech lab. Through independent research and structured in-person lessons, I studied and explored this immersive technology because I believed in its ability to support audiences with experiencing life from a first-person point of view. According to research on this technology, VR can best be described by the following characteristics:
- Empathy
- Access
- Space and a spatial relationship
- Placement
- Narration
- Movement
What resulted is a two-and-a-half-minute 360-degree video showing a day in the life of Dru Ramdin, a caregiver in the Bronx who was a stay-at-home mom for the first 15 years of her son’s life. I had been familiar with Dru’s story for a while especially after spending time with her and her family in their neighborhood earlier this year and over a series of home visits in 2019. (Earlier this year, I had profiled Dru for an audio slideshow about what it’s like raising a child on the autism spectrum which you can view here.)
My intention for producing the VR piece was to bring it to a wellness event, that would be played during my presentation at the event, to generate a conversation among the participants about their mental health. First-person narratives and research have shown that stigmatization of mental health disorders is a common experience among black and brown communities and this often presents a barrier to individuals seeking treatment. So I knew that speaking on behalf of research on caregiver stress would provide a pathway for caregivers who attended the wellness event to speak openly about their personal experience. Plus, I wanted caregivers to see their stories reflected in Dru’s and for them to engage with the video with the cardboard headsets and headphones I brought. I even made sure to connect to the wifi for the video to run quicker, but I forgot to bring an adaptor.
Using Events to Gather People who have Similar Lived Experiences as a way for them to Deepen Their Ties Within the Community
Aligning with my community vision, I produced one community engagement event for 13 caregivers on Monday, November 18 to help them release stress through meditation and mindfulness. I also presented information about local and national research pertaining to stress management for people in this community. We carefully crafted this date and our agenda to accommodate the needs of other people in the community, which is the essence of engagement/social journalism. The mere act of coordinating this event around everyone’s schedules has allowed me to shift my thinking of people in my community from “sources” to collaborators.
A month prior to the workshop, I connected with a group of parent caregivers and a self-advocate during a Bronx Family Advisory Support Group meeting in the Bronx on Monday, October 12. I introduced myself and my mission for the community in a natural and conversational tone. First, I told them that I am also a caregiver and understand the challenges of providing consistent, round-the-clock care to support another human being. From having connected with several people in the community over a year of listening to them, I discovered that people like Dru Ramdin, Yvette Parish, Jasmine Ferrer, Adhanet Zereabruk and so many others are often curious about my connection to them and the community. I usually start with something to the effect of “My name is Ariam and I have a brother on the autism spectrum. But I don’t know everything about this community.” I also learned that I had a natural advantage with people in the caregiver community because — like many of them — I, too, am black, a woman from an immigrant home, and live in the Bronx. Then I began to highlight the themes that have arisen in my work as a social journalist and the pains experienced by people in the community such as stigma, social isolation, and stress/burnout and how this workshop would be a form of respite for caregivers themselves.
Initially, before reaching this group of caregivers that meet in the Bronx every month, Dru and I had wanted caregivers to come to our workshop like we did this summer in the Community Room at the Parkchester Library in Central Bronx which resulted in only one person (a friend of Dru’s) showing up. Knowing that we hadn’t promoted our summer workshop as much as I would have liked and that people who said they’d be there didn’t show up, we decided to eliminate barriers of entry to our workshop by making it free and meeting people where they already are which highlights the “You Are Here” engagement model as shown on the Dot Connector Studio which is designed to build local community and intensify experiences around shared spaces and concerns.
One workshop attendee said her way of de-stressing is by drawing water into a bathtub and sinking into it like a tube. Another attendee was moved to tears. She said Dru’s meditation “took her back” to a solo trip she made to Mexico City years ago. 85 percent of people said they would recommend this workshop to another caregiver and on nearly every feedback form caregivers said they felt calmer. I called a few of the participants two weeks after the workshop and learned that a few of the participants felt a greater sense of awareness due to their participation in our workshop, as described on a phone call.
“After the workshop, I realized that I really don’t need the stress. All I need is to find my center, meditate and not let things bother me.” — Angelina Miranda
Using community spaces to host your events is an excellent way to reach underserved communities by meeting people where they are. After all, imparting people with the knowledge they need to improve their lives is the fundamental nature of service journalism.
Using Facilitation to Drive In-Person Community Conversations
My passion, bridge-building project aims to bring communities who have traditionally been at odds together to build trust, understanding, and a way forward — one conversation at a time.
I facilitated a three-hour-long conversation about the cultural and historical dynamics between five Eritreans and Ethiopians on Wednesday, December 5 at the radio station of Newmark J-School. This project took months in the making — from meeting with studio managers in outer boroughs and even attempting to leverage my own connections with BronxNet from my three-month summer internship to scouting potential guests in person and on social media to crafting an agenda that encourages dialogue that emphasizes personal experiences over opinions — I felt victorious and proud to have brought this conversation to life.
To help me facilitate the conversation, I printed out individual copies of the agenda for the participants. We didn’t get to go through each prompt, but heavy and juicy themes emerged from our conversation including migration, war, interracial dating and marriage, colorism and parental expectations. I edited a few soundbites from each participant and posted it on Soundcloud for people to get a taste of the tension, joy, and heartache poured from the participants as they told their stories.
My idea to facilitate this conversation came from the multiple sources that I had researched and referenced over the better part of the year. One, in particular, came from Spaceship Media, a journalism startup that seeks to produce civil, meaningful interactions online, was an organization that I had learned about while speaking with Class of 2017 Social-J alums Alyxaundria Sanford and Kristine Villanueva. They were moderators of The Many which was a nine-month project that brought voters from different sides of the political spectrum to discuss their questions, concerns, and hopes for the future of American society and politics in 2018. The startup published a toolkit explaining their Dialogue Journalism platform which highlighted this takeaway from Sanford, “As the group grew and time went on, I saw members change their approach, take time before reacting to comments, and openly admitting they had never thought of things they way someone may have presented them.” As the moderator for the Diaspora Dialogue, I heard feedback from participants that reflected the immediate impact this sitdown had on them.
“I came here to learn something and I did. It was interesting to hear what others had to say about our cultures, said Miriam Negasi, a 20-something-year-old school psychologist of Eritrean heritage from West Orange, New Jersey, who had expressed her initial discomfort upon hearing an Ethiopian-American millenial say that her country and Miriam’s homeland were “the same.”
My plan is to edit the conversation into 10-minute podcasts based on themes previously mentioned and create a facilitation guide for other Eritrean, Ethiopian and African communities globally to conduct conversations in their respective cities.
Some of the hardest stories to tell are the ones about our families and ourselves.
In April, I wrote an award-winning personal essay about coming to grips with the possibility that I may, someday, be my brother’s sole caregiver. After the story was published by The Black Youth Project for their coverage of Mental Health Awareness Month that following month, I began sharing copies to other caregivers on Facebook groups, over text messages and email as a way to share a bit about my background and introduce them (many of the ones I had worked with were older parents) to the sibling perspective. This kind of piece served as an empathy generator that the Dot Connector Studio defines as a “model designed to introduce a new perspective or inspire action by emphasizing the human experience.”
Parents opened up more after sharing this article. One even introduced me to a mom in Long Island who published her own memoir titled “Situation Zain: Autism Who Knew” in 2014 because she said my writing “was simple and reminded me of this caregiver’s writing style.” A group of families of East African origin that I had connected with while reporting on the stigma of developmental disabilities through a private, FB group had even invited me to their monthly conference call to talk about the importance of building healthy sibling relationships in the home because of the article. That experience allowed me to listen to and survey parental concerns from older caregivers. One parent expressed this: “I feel guilty because I feel like my attention is toward [my son] and not her. She has said ‘Mom you don’t pay attention to me, sometimes it’s about my brother.’ My daughter is 10; she already has anger and resentment.” While my project focused on supporting other caregivers, this essay did teach me that as journalists, we get to give a little of ourselves to gain a lot from our community.
In my research of international organizations doing similar engagement work, I discovered a UK non-profit communications organization called On Our Radar which facilitates and promotes media, research and advocacy projects between unheard and influential voices around the world. I learned about the agency on the Engaged Journalism Accelerator database and dug around to find their manifesto for journalism published on Medium in early November. Here are a few that resonate the most with my experience doing social journalism with my community.
- Professional skills and lived experiences are a powerful mix
- People are the experts of their own lived experiences and have the right to share their own stories, in their own languages, in their own time
- Technology is a tool for listening not only broadcasting
- Professional skills and lived experiences are a powerful mix
The underlying theme for the work I create, as demonstrated during my graduate studies at the Newmark Journalism School at the City University of New York, is to continue to affect change in an industry that believes in creating and amplifying good, nuanced, impactful journalism created with underserved communities and not for them.
