Community Connections: Updates from our Executive Director

Dear Acknowledge Alliance family,

It is hard to believe that we are already two months into the start of a new fiscal year for Acknowledge Alliance! I am so proud of all that we have accomplished together since my last update in January. 

All year long, we have been celebrating Acknowledge Alliance’s 30th anniversary of providing vital mental health services and resilience support to local schools and community organizations. Last year, we reached 2,150 youth and educators across 28 schools and institutions. Our youth engaged in 7,357 hours of counseling with our therapists, who spent an average of 14% more time supporting each student this year. The benefits from this increased treatment were clear - students reported significant decreases in depression, less anxiety, greater capacity for dealing with stress and grief, and improved ability for expressing their emotions constructively. Our Resilience Consultants provided 2,435 consultations and coaching sessions to 412 educators and other staff on campuses, promoting professional resilience tailored to meet individual needs. This work is making a real difference in our schools. As one teacher said, “seeing our resilience counselor brightens up my day. I feel more positive and optimistic about my interactions with students and classrooms after having been heard and listened to by my Acknowledge Alliance counselor.”  And this teacher is not the only one that feels this way - 84% of educators we served said they felt increased empathy and understanding of the lives of their students. 

On May 23, the Acknowledge Alliance family gathered at our 30th anniversary Forget-Me-Not event to learn about nurturing resilience in young people, and to honor our outstanding educators and community leaders. The evening was filled with so much passion, joy and gratitude. Whether it was one of our therapists sharing a touching story of how counseling changed the trajectory of a teenager’s life, or the incredible educators from Jose Antonio Vargas Elementary School expressing how deeply they care about ensuring their students feel seen each day, I was humbled and inspired by each person we heard from at Forget-Me-Not.

Behind the scenes, we continued to build our organizational culture and priorities around diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ). In April and May, I held our semi-annual fireside chats with our teams. These meetings have yielded fruitful one-on-one conversations with staff, and I am continuing to learn and grow from them. In one memorable meeting, the team gave me the opportunity to lead a grounding and breathing practice, which was such a treat and allowed me to connect with them on a different level. In May, all staff attended the second of our “Equity in Action” DEIJ workshops entitled “Designing a Positive and Inclusive Workplace Culture”. Our Inclusion Task Force also piloted its first Breakfast Club session, a follow-up conversation to help integrate and carry forward what we learned from each other in the DEIJ workshop. 

In late May, I was honored to visit San Miguel Elementary School in Sunnyvale to accept a generous gift of support from a professional, international organization for women educators, named Delta Kappa Gamma. The group includes current and retired educators from Redwood City down to South San Jose. Sunnyvale School District Teacher Colleen Lynch-Espinoza, who is the current president of this chapter, helped select the three organizations to receive a portion of their raffle basket proceeds, and we are so grateful that Colleen suggested Acknowledge Alliance. In Colleen’s words: “The team was thrilled to hear about your organization's important and impactful work and was eager to donate and learn more.” It was wonderful to receive a tour of the campus, visit our counseling room which is beautifully decorated with student art, and hear first-hand how our team is making such a difference.

I am proud that our Resilience Consultation Program was recently featured in Stanford Children’s Health’s 2023 Community Benefit Report and was 1 of only 11 youth mental health programs funded by the El Camino Healthcare District (as highlighted in ECHD’s press release). As our Development Director Ryan Magcuyao shared in both pieces, RCP directly supports the mental health of educators, so they have “less burnout, better classrooms, and can better meet their students’ needs”. 

I am very thrilled to let you all know that we are exploring expanding our consultation work, and partnering with PreK and Early Childhood Educators. In the words of one of our long-time supporters; “early education teachers need to be prepared and supported, since ‘life’ seems to be affecting even our younger students.” 

I look forward to the 2024-2025 year ahead as we continue creating school communities where all students and teachers can thrive. Our commitment to pushing the boundaries in school-based mental health care, and teacher support and retention, through the power of integrity, inclusion, relationships, and collaboration remains steadfast. Thank you for joining us in this work and transforming lives with us, one classroom at a time.

With gratitude,

Sharon Navarro
Executive Director

P.S. The summer is a great time to take advantage of the longer days by practicing self-care. What are some of your favorite summer self-care activities? I would love to hear from you, so please let me know!

Community Connections: Updates from our Executive Director

Dear Acknowledge Alliance family,

At the start of this new year, I want to wish you the absolute best for 2024 and share some of Acknowledge Alliance’s special accomplishments in 2023.

Remarkably, Acknowledge Alliance celebrates our 30th anniversary in 2024! The generosity of our community helped fuel our efforts to push the boundaries of what’s possible in school-based mental healthcare. We are honored to have been providing mental health services and resilience support to schools and community organizations for decades, changing the lives of thousands of students and educators every year. This past year alone, our agency provided direct services to over 1,700 students and over 400 educators, while also reaching over 10,000 students with our indirect services. 

• 100% of our students who may have been on a probation track are instead in the process of graduating. 

• 84% of the educators we work with report having increased empathy and understanding of the lives of their students. 

The moving personal success stories of students and teachers validate these outcomes. We have heard from so many students how counseling has transformed their perspectives and behaviors in the classroom and beyond, and how the modeling and support of resilience counselors have helped educators become more resilient in their personal and professional lives. 

Behind the scenes, we continued to make strides forward in our efforts to center diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) in our work. In October, the entire Acknowledge Alliance team gathered for the first of a series of DEIJ professional development workshops. This training, led by Cory Ervin-Stewart, was titled “Sharing Ourselves”, and helped the team to learn how to connect through trust and empathy and to build an environment of workplace trust. Staff participated in exercises where we shared possessions that held personal significance in our lives and engaged in meaningful conversations with each other. This training was driven by our staff-led Inclusion Task Force, a working group charged with recommending meaningful changes to DEIJ initiatives at our agency, and ensuring its concepts underpin all the important functions of our work.

I have continued meeting directly with all of our program staff through quarterly fireside chats, both to give me the opportunity to share important organizational updates and to hear directly from staff. These conversations have increased our team’s ability to communicate and allowed staff to get to know me as the Executive Director so they feel more comfortable surfacing issues with me. This year, I added one additional fireside chat with our group of interns, furthering inclusion at the agency.

We remain laser-focused on continuing to recruit diverse leaders by partnering with two prominent organizations to broaden our reach in the community. We were once again selected by Boardlead to participate in their free board matching services. It was an especially competitive selection process this year, with Acknowledge Alliance chosen as one of only 509 organizations from over 20,000 applications. The selection criteria included the strength of our mission and programs, solid organization and board structure, demonstrated need for board development, attainable resource development expectations, financial stability, and a commitment to DEI. I am incredibly proud that Acknowledge Alliance’s strength in these areas was recognized. In November, I attended the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute’s (APALI) board match event. APALI is committed to leadership representation and influential participation in civic life for members of the APA community. I was grateful for the opportunity to speak about our work and network with prospective board candidates. 

As we look to the year ahead and celebrate Acknowledge Alliance’s 30th anniversary of nurturing resilience and building positive relationships between students and educators, it is clear that we have come a long way and transformed so many lives thanks to the unwavering commitment of our community of supporters. Thank you for making this all possible, Acknowledge Alliance family!

I wish you and your loved ones health and peace in the new year.

Sharon Navarro
Executive Director

P.S. Every year I make a promise to myself for the New Year (I’ve decided “resolution” feels too stiff and stern!) This year, I’m committed to maintaining my connections to family and friends, and building new ones, by actively seeking out opportunities to collaborate. What promise or hopes do you have for yourself in 2024? I would love to hear from you, so please let me know! 

Community Connections: Updates from our Executive Director

Dear Acknowledge Alliance Family,

Happy New Year! Because July 1st marks the start of our fiscal year, it’s a great opportunity to take stock of all we’ve accomplished together.

Remarkably, Acknowledge Alliance will celebrate our 30th anniversary in 2024! We are so honored to have been providing mental health services and resilience support to schools and community organizations for decades, reaching thousands of students and educators every year. Last year, youth in our Collaborative Counseling Program engaged in nearly 7,000 hours of counseling with our psychotherapists, a 10% increase from the prior year. This more frequent and extended timeframe of counseling led to students reporting decreases in depression and anxiety, fewer trauma-specific symptoms, deeper connections with their community, and stronger positive family and social relationships. Our Resilience Consultation Program served 645 educators, which was a 48% increase from the previous year. This means our resilience consultants helped more teachers and principals than ever before to feel healthy and empowered to address classroom challenges.

In May, we were thrilled to welcome everyone in the Acknowledge Alliance family to the relaunch of our annual Forget-Me-Not celebration, our first time holding the event in-person in 4 years. The room was filled with joyous energy from beginning to end. We had a wonderful time sharing our passion for the work we do, learning together about nurturing resilience in young people through an illuminating panel discussion, and honoring this year's outstanding educator honorees. We also played some spirited rounds of Connect Four and Jenga and created beautiful mandalas in our Art Therapy and Play Therapy Activity Zones. The lively return of events continued through June with our first board retreat in two years and our all-staff summer gathering. Both events helped to nurture connections among staff and board members, and allowed us to celebrate another successful year. 

Behind the scenes, we continued to center diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) in our work because it directly complements Acknowledge Alliance’s guiding principles and agency values, especially in regards to the vital role relationships play in our strengths-based services. I firmly believe our agency must not approach DEIJ as just another “thing on our plate” - it IS the plate. DEIJ concepts must underpin all the important functions of our work, and we must implement them in a way that enhances our connections to the youth and teachers we serve, and model inclusive and equitable organizational policies and practices. With these goals in mind, the second iteration of the Acknowledge Alliance Inclusion Task Force, a staff-led working group charged with moving the needle on DEIJ at our agency, was able to accomplish so much in the last six months including:

• Creating an agency equity statement

• Organizing an arc of DEI learning concepts for all staff

• Holding DEIJ facilitated workshops for the RCP, CCP and management teams 

This year, I was honored to be selected to collaborate with two leading organizations on efforts to engage community leaders and drive capacity-building grant funding. First, I was selected once again to partner with BoardLead, a selective board-matching organization available to successful nonprofits at no cost through a competitive application process. I am grateful that our partnership with BoardLead resulted in matching with our two newest Board members, Cindy Goldman and Ankur Jain. Second, I again have the honor of participating in the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) Steering Committee, a group of seven nonprofit leaders who help guide the design of their capacity-building grants program by providing insights and recommendations to CZI staff. The committee’s members help shape capacity-building activities so they will benefit the larger community of grantees, and serve as strategic advisors to help ensure that CZI’s funding efforts are anchored in the real experiences and needs of their grantees.

With the end of this fiscal year, we say farewell and express our deepest gratitude to Steve Hope, who is retiring from our Board of Directors after an extraordinary 9 years of service. Steve held many roles on the Board, including multiple terms as Board Chair. His commitment to the agency and leadership has been invaluable. Thank you, Steve, for helping to shape Acknowledge Alliance into the amazing organization that it is today.

As we look ahead to 2024 and Acknowledge Alliance’s 30th anniversary of nurturing resilience and building positive relationships between students and educators, I want to reiterate that we were only able to accomplish our goals thanks to the steadfast commitment of our community of supporters. 

I look forward to celebrating the accomplishments of the last 30 years together and furthering our commitment to building thriving school communities for many years to come.

Sharon Navarro

Executive Director

P.S. What is your favorite Acknowledge Alliance memory from our last 30 years? I would love to hear from you, so please let me know!

Community Connections: Updates from our Executive Director

Dear Acknowledge Alliance family,

At the start of this new year, I want to wish you the absolute best for 2023 and share some of Acknowledge Alliance’s special accomplishments in 2022.

Since Acknowledge Alliance’s founding in 1994 (yes, 2023 marks our 29th anniversary!), we have been providing mental health services and resilience support in schools and community organizations that reach thousands of students and educators every year. Our staff are creating and reinforcing bonds that last a lifetime. Whether it’s through our Resilience Consultation Program, our Collaborative Counseling Program, or our intern training program, we are strengthening the teaching profession, disrupting the pipeline to prison, and training the next generation of mental health professionals.

How do we know this? We have data! In 2022, we reached nearly 3,000 students and over 600 educators, and trained 6 mental health interns. Anecdotally, I can vouch for this too. We’ve heard from so many teachers, students and interns about lives transformed, burn-out prevented and the exceptional quality of our training program. 

• 93% of our students who may have been on a probation track are instead in the process of graduating. 

• 86% of the educators we work with are using our strategies to promote their own resilience, like setting boundaries and recognizing their own strengths. 

• 100% of interns agreed that our training helped them develop new clinical skills

Behind the scenes, I found that our staff and board work needed to be further centered around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) values, so that we can continue to do better in the DEI space. To this end, I invested in building a more representative Board and staff, and am ensuring DEI principles continue to guide our strategic plan and continuous learning at the agency. With help from grant-funded DEI consultants, I was encouraged to continue to advocate for transparency in salaries, pay equity, and open paths to leadership for staff and board members who bring diverse perspectives – from BIPOC folks to the LGBTQ+ community, to people with disabilities and neuro-divergent folks. We launched a staff-led Inclusion Task Force – a working group charged with moving the needle on DEI at our organization. The task force members will rotate every six months, and in just two iterations, have accomplished so much:

• operationalizing our values 

• planning staff and board training 

• updating our employee handbook and performance reviews 

• and many other exciting projects

Serving on the boards of other nonprofits is deepening my connection to the nonprofit ecosystem, giving me fruitful ideas for my work at the agency and opportunities to collaborate. I am thrilled that I was asked to join the Board of the Center for Excellence in Nonprofits’ (CEN) in June 2022. I was also honored to be President of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), Silicon Valley Chapter’s Board of Directors. 

Like many other nonprofits, we carefully returned to in-person events in 2022. We had our annual agency all-staff retreat at Campo di Bocce in Los Gatos, where we enjoyed being together after 2 years of Zoom retreats. And, we were so excited about the agency’s Community Open House event, our first in-person gathering since 2019! Held on a beautiful October evening in our office courtyard, it was a wonderful opportunity to showcase our programs, and thank our staff, donors and Board. 

2022 was also a year of feeling honored: we were 1 of only 10 local nonprofits to participate in a cohort training created by Jim Morgan, founder of Applied Materials, and we were selected to partner with BoardLead, a selective board-matching organization available to successful nonprofits at no cost through a competitive application process.

In 2023, we will continue to grow and expand our efforts as we move into the new year, advancing our core values of integrity, inclusion, relationships, and collaboration, and celebrating the diversity – and the strength born from that diversity – of our community. In doing so, we hope to further the connections that foster relationships.

As I like to say, there is a magic to this special agency, and I want to assure you of your belonging in this exceptional Acknowledge Alliance family that we share. We know that relationships and community connection are at the heart of our mission, and we are all stronger together. 

I wish you and your loved ones health and peace in the new year.

Sharon Navarro

Executive Director

P.S. Every year I adopt a New Year’s resolution and this year it is self-care – for all of us. What resolution(s) have you adopted for 2023? Let me know!