Spotlight on our Team: Meet Susannah Bartlow
We often highlight the special partners that make our work possible. This month, we thought we’d spend a few minutes in conversation with Susannah Bartlow, Ph. D. Susannah is our senior project manager in charge of leading our talented outreach team. Keep reading to find out more about her work, her vision for outreach at Whole Child Strategies, and what’s on her team’s to-do list for the coming year.
What attracted you to WCS? What’s your connection to the mission?
I think the first thing was that it’s community focused and about self determination, which lines up with my personal politics and the way I see the world. When I do community work or anything related to education, I want it to begin and end with people in the community. And that’s very much what’s at the core of Whole Child’s mission.
When I first heard about Whole Child, I had heard about it in terms of the direct services. And so, I was also interested in the opportunity to get to know families in Memphis and get to know people not through any artificial connection. I moved to Memphis in 2017, so I was excited about hitting the ground running and really getting to make a difference in the city.
It felt like I was going to be doing something directly useful that would also help me get to know Memphis and with/for an organization that was not trying to do it from a charity mindset, but very much from an empowerment mindset, where I want to help people find the tools that they need so they can make their own decisions about their lives.
So often, the approach to outreach asks “What can I do for you?” But the Whole Child Strategies approach seems to ask “What can I help you do for yourself”? Can you talk about the difference in those two ideas?
Well, I think there are approaches to outreach that see the place where I (the organizer or manager) sit as the center of the world. So whether I have an office in Crosstown, or an office in a church, or an office in a government building, the work and the resources are here and you have to come to me. And even if I go and do home visits, my office is the center of the world. And I really see the work that I had been doing in service to families and that I now do in supporting the organizers is clear: we’re place based. We’re neighborhood based. So help me get to know your neighborhood. Help me figure out how I can build a relationship with you. The neighborhood is the center of your world, and it should be.
The other part is that I do believe there is unfair distribution of resources in our city, in our country. And so some outreach I think, whether it’s organizing or service work, looks at people who don’t have access to resources and says that somehow they need to do something different to get it.
It can be hard at times to see the bigger picture. Whole Child focuses on barriers a lot and so being realistic about the barriers is also part of how I think about outreach. So I don’t think of outreach in terms of what’s wrong or what’s lacking with the people we serve. I want to get to know the community for exactly who they are and what they want me to know.
What’s been your biggest challenge?
I think there are two things. There's just a fundamental lack of infrastructure and resources, you know? Nobody makes enough money. You know? So many people are without income. The neighborhood has been divested from, schools have been closed. There's just a laundry list of things that have happened. And unemployment was exacerbated after COVID.
People hang in. And they make the best of what they can do. It’s not that it’s somewhere where there’s no hope and no plan. I know a lot of people who do really amazing things there, it’s just literally there’s no money that people could have ready access to for lasting change. There are very few living wage jobs. Fundamental social infrastructure is lacking and continues to be lacking. And then COVID exacerbates it because people have lost work.
And then the second challenge I would say is that there’s difficulty holding the thread of projects. So, let’s say we’ll start something and then it moves to something else. And then it moves to something else because the needs are always shifting. It’s just a reality; when you’re living and struggling for survival, you're always finding a new challenge. And it becomes really difficult to actually build up and out because you’re dealing with the real-life grenades and landmines, unexpected issues. Housing might be the priority issue last week and this week it’s food.
Also--when it comes to the way that I respond to the challenges that are happening right now, it’s always in the back of my mind that we shouldn’t even be having a conversation about “do people have housing or not”.
“We don’t work from a charity mindset, but very much from an empowerment mindset. I want to give people the tools that they need so they can make their own decisions about their lives.”
Talk to me about the future of outreach in Klondike and Smokey City.
We are not the only ones that do outreach in KSC, so I hope that we will continue to build relationships with others who are invested in the neighborhood. We’ve also talked a lot as a team about how this is a really important time for us to tighten up base-building, connecting with as many neighbors as we can, and supporting our champions. Because this is a time when it’s harder for us to canvas the neighborhood and do detailed project management of things that are neighborhood facing. It’s harder to implement block parties and things. What we can concentrate on is the residents who we’ve always had positive relationships with, the ones who have come out over and over again to Neighborhood Council meetings -- well, they’re now our champions and we can develop really close and powerful relationships with them. And then those relationships can help grow into a stronger base of people in the neighborhood.
It’s one thing to have 10 or 20 people who can come consistently to meetings and self-advocate. But it’s another to build and have that base get bigger and bigger.
Another piece of that strategy is to continue to bring together champions and partners, which is an important story. The champions and partners are starting to meet roughly once a month to coordinate and offer updates. For now we’re building the relationships, but over time we hope that we can see some positive collaborations and action steps. And it lets us take our hands off the wheel a bit and allow them to steer the process, which is the ultimate goal.
The sudden shift to virtual and digital services forced us to see that not all Memphians have the same access to wi-fi and high-speed internet — or even the economic stability to manage those monthly utilities. How do you make sure that everyone can stay connected to this work?
That’s part of why we’re working so closely with the champions and doing a lot to make sure they’re supported. The champions are people who go door to door still. They’re doing social distancing, and they’re all people who are cautious and take care of themselves. But there are people who still have landlines in the neighborhood, you know? Or who don’t have communications systems. You may take it as a given that everybody’s world is global, but it’s not. Some people’s world is five blocks wide -- not only if they’re homebodies, but because they literally don’t have access to the tools other Memphians have.
Pre-COVID, our canvassing efforts were able to bridge some of those gaps directly. And I think the pandemic has accelerated the goal that we’ve always had of having the neighborhood really lead outreach. That’s always been the goal. Maybe we’re behind the scenes: maybe we can fund a few things, or coach people on how to do fundraising [for example], but our role is to facilitate and support.
And the virus -- by virtue of the fact that we can’t be in the community physically -- has sped up that timeline.
What’s on your team’s to-do list for the coming year?
I would love to see the team grow to be as integral to the neighborhood as the residents are. And I think in some ways we’ve achieved that, especially with the strength of the relationships that the team builds. But continuing to be more embedded in the heartbeat of the community. There’s a lot that goes on that we’re still learning!
And I would also like to see the outreach, the visioning, and the implementation work that we do be ever more owned by the community in a way that honors their labor. Not necessarily hiring everybody, but anything we can do as a nonprofit to channel resources back into the neighborhood.
There are some really concrete ideas that the champions have advanced that go beyond block parties, gatherings, or moments in time that feed the work. Those are all good! But [we see them taking on] project goals like building a resource center in the neighborhood -- things on a larger scale that are more systemic or structural that the neighborhood really owns. I would love to see more of that.
“[This work] is about actually being a human, relating to another human and just listening.”
What advice do you have to offer other orgs (perhaps in other cities) seeking to create an inclusive plan for community action?
I’m not super comfortable offering advice, but I can say things that have worked in my experience. I can say the things I see the team doing that make a huge difference. Approaching with humility and reorienting your organizational practice to always be humble. It goes back to my earlier point about “who is the center of the world?” and I think in general, remembering that it’s not about you.
And something I really admire about the neighborhood organizers is they make themselves available on the neighborhood’s timeline and not their own. We don’t want people to think that they have to do community work 24/7; we all have a right to boundaries and rest. But they do things that don’t fit into a tidy 9-5. And I think being willing to reimagine your structure and making yourself available on the community’s timeline in a way the community recognizes is really important.
And the last thing the organizers do that I think is really visionary, even though it’s simple--they just tell the truth about what’s happening and they listen very carefully. And I think if organizations are looking to change the way they do business, if you listen five times as much as you speak, you have pretty much learned all you need to know. And that doesn’t mean building listening sessions -- we tend to think about formality and structure, right? -- but this is about actually being a human, relating to another human and just listening.
How do you keep yourself focused and engaged in doing this well?
During COVID that’s been a challenge for me, just to be real. Generally speaking, I try to pay attention to my human body needs, right? Eating on time and going to bed on time. I listen to music and do arts and crafts; I have habits and routines that help me stay peaceful and remember what’s important. And I also am very fortunate to have support systems from different phases of my life -- friends, housemates, I even live with a baby! I mean, I say that knowing that I’m not the baby’s primary caregiver; babies don’t always bring peace. (laughs) But they are adorable.
I have a meditation practice, which is an important part of how I do this, too. So for all of the stresses that come, staying grounded in my practices and making room for fun. I’m kind of a serious person by nature, but making room for fun.