Date and time:
January 28, 2025, at 1 p.m. Eastern time
Description:
The Right Question Institute (RQI) specializes in designing simple educational methods and tools to teach skills essential for self-advocacy and agency. RQI helps people working on the front lines of a range of systems build the ability of their clients to: a) ask better questions, and b) participate more effectively in decisions that affect their lives and the lives of their families.
In this interactive training session, participants will learn a practical method to:
- Strengthen clients’ sense of agency and voice as they navigate systems.
- Build people’s capacity to advocate for themselves and take action on their own behalf in all places where decisions are being made that affect them, in the legal system and beyond.
Participants will examine the method through an active learning experience, explore applications in different fields, and discuss how to integrate the method into their work. After the session there will be opportunities for participants to receive personalized support in learning how to use the method with their clients.
At the end of the webinar, participants will receive a download link for supplemental resources, including the tool introduced in the webinar, a facilitation guide, and further reading.
Who should attend:
This webinar will be relevant to anyone interested in building people’s skills to advocate for their needs. People working on the front lines in legal services, criminal justice, adult education, direct services, social work, community-based organizations, and public agencies are especially encouraged to attend.
Cost:
Donation based. Pay as you wish. Accessibility is very important to us. As a nonprofit organization, we are able to continue to offer our trainings and resources for free because of the generous support of donors. If you are able, please consider making a donation to help support our work. Donate at rightquestion.org/donate.
Facilitators:
Naomi Campbell is the director of the Legal Empowerment Program at the Right Question Institute (RQI). She supports legal professionals working in low-income communities, who use RQI’s methods to help their clients feel greater self-efficacy and independence, partner more effectively with service providers, and advocate for themselves, in the legal system and beyond. Prior to joining RQI, Naomi was a legal fellow with Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM) in Mexico City, where she supported migrant workers in defending their rights as they moved between their home communities in Mexico and their places of work in the United States. She has also represented asylum-seekers and was a teaching assistant for cross-disciplinary negotiation and dispute resolution courses. She earned her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School and is a member of the New York Bar.
Luz Santana is the Co-Founder of the Right Question Institute (RQI) and co-author of Partnering with Parents to Ask the Right Questions (ASCD: 2016) and Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions (Harvard Education Press: 2011). Luz is an Adjunct Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation EAGER grant to improve doctoral students’ question-asking abilities. Luz has spent 30 years as an advocate for students, parents, schools and low-income communities. She came to the U.S. mainland from Puerto Rico, and her experiences navigating the welfare system and other public institutions while earning an associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degree – and raising a family – have shaped her approach. She is now a nationally recognized educational innovator, facilitator, and keynote speaker in English and Spanish who has designed a wide range of participatory learning curricula in many fields, including parent engagement, adult education, social services, health care, immigrant advocacy, neighborhood organizing, and voter engagement.
Supplemental Articles:
Campbell, N. (2021). From Service Delivery to Capacity-Building: a Scalable Approach to Legal Empowerment. Social Innovations Journal, 10. Retrieved from https://socialinnovationsjournal.com/index.php/sij/article/view/1907
Alegría, M., Polo, A., Gao, S., Santana, L., Rothstein, D., Jimenez, A., Hunter, M.L., Mendieta, F., Oddo, V., Normand, S.L. (2008). Evaluation of a patient activation and empowerment intervention in mental health care. Med Care, 46(3), 247- 56. Retrieved from
https://rightquestion.org/resources/evaluation-of-a-patient-activation-and-empowerment-intervention-in-mental-health-care/