What is The IWES Way?

What does it mean to do work centered around justice, racial equity, health and well-being, and healing in the United States (especially in the South!) in 2026? How do you authentically fight for the principles you believe in, while not making yourself an unintended casualty of a deeply polarized culture war? How do you use the power you have as an organization to elevate, represent, and work with and on behalf of the communities you partner with if the dominant narrative repeatedly shows that they do not respect, value, listen to, or even want to see those very communities? How best should we organize ourselves as an organization to reflect the values we want to see in the world within our internal culture, practices, and engagement with community?

These are just some of the questions we are grappling with as we step into a new year; just a quarter into the century, yet at times it feels as if we’ve gone back at least a century in our progression and growth as a collective.

We ended the year in gratitude for all that 2025 has brought us, and we are beginning the year taking time to reflect on our 33-year journey so that we can look forward and envision our evolution. So you won’t see a lot of articles in this newsletter, because just like a lot of folks we encounter in our work, we need to take some time to pause, recalibrate, and figure out who we are in this current context and how we want to show up. But don’t worry, the work continues, so make sure you stay tuned to our social media to stay up to date with all the programs, events, resources, and opportunities we love to provide!

Over the past few years, the grant landscape has changed, and we are at a smaller staff size than we have been in over 10 years. We have moved from doing less direct service programming and have taken on new roles, often in more of an advisory and capacity-building position, such as managing multi-city grants centered around health equity and racial justice; working with municipal entities to advise on program monitoring and evaluation; and partnering with governmental agencies in cities that experience disaster to provide thought-partnership, share lessons learned, and provide trainings, webinars, and other crucial resources. Instead of teaching comprehensive sex ed (CSE), we’re evaluating a CSE curriculum we created and seeking partnerships across the US to connect us with youth to learn more about their health and provide their honest feedback. We have expanded our reach to new cities across the US (like Worcester, MA, Spartanburg, SC, Jackson, MS, and Philadelphia, PA) and internationally (Jamaica and the United Kingdom). That includes our media production, too, as we work on projects internationally and are incorporating new technologies, like using VR to facilitate deeper understanding and catalyze attitudinal, behavioral, policy, and ultimately systems change throughout health systems in the UK. Most importantly we have taken time to go deep and refine our core ethos and seek opportunities to more intentionally thread these major elements of The IWES Way — climate change, healing justice, healing through the arts, and narrative change — across all our work.

So what does all of this mean for the future of IWES? And how do we stay on top of the work we aim to do when it feels like every day, sometimes every hour, a new, horrific thing comes out that undermines who we are and what we so diligently strive to achieve?

This month we will continue to dedicate deep time to explore all of the above and more at our first staff retreat in a loooong time (like pre-COVID long time!). In the spirit of reflecting our values, we know this conversation starts within our collective, as a collective, and we’re excited for all of our staff to come together from across the US (Aloha from Hawaii!) to listen, reflect, strategize, and also, to relax. Who knows, maybe this time we’ll finally get a group photo? Make sure to come back for our June newsletter to find out if we do!