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DATA WARRIORS
DATA WARRIORS IS...
​​...an intergenerational collaboration in the form of internships, fellowships, and community engagements. The Data Warriors project is designed to bring youth perspectives and wisdom into Mycelium’s evaluation while increasing community research capacities.
We frame our evaluations action research processes in terms of accountability, centering on the guiding question:
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How can we use anti-colonial and anti-racist research methods to understand cultural, institutional, and individual accountability while taking data-driven action at multiple scales?
Guding Frameworks / Theories:
Popular Education
Project Based Learning
Trauma-informed Somatics
Collective Action
Multiple Ways of Knowing
Arts Based Evaluation
Intersectional Feminism
Abolition
Research as Ceremony
Transformative Justice
Critical Theory
Freedom Dreaming
“I feel like the nature and humans part of worldview is important or interesting it leads to pollution and we’re polluting the environment. Also the worldviews that say some people should rule over and control other people isn't right.”
- Data Warriors Intern
WHY DATA WARRIORS?
Mycelium Youth Network launched the Data Warriors program to develop a model for program evaluation, education evaluation, and community research that better equips youth, the community and education stakeholders like MYN for values aligned inquiry and action.
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Data Warriors builds on a legacy of community action research in environmental movements in the United States. Interrupting the binary of ‘researcher or community member’, Data Warriors was designed to support youth to produce new knowledge.
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“If you think about it, everything is data.”
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- Data Warriors Intern
GLIMPSE INTO OUR WORK
These are the values that Data Warriors youth and adults uplifted through a multi-step data collection and collaborative analysis process. This process to identify grounding/anchoring values for research and evaluation is highlighted in the DW toolkit.
Power Sharing WITH students means:
1. Students lead sessions
2. Youth co-create programs
3. Adults leave youth alone when appropriate (giving them space to breathe / ideate / hang without adults over their shoulder)
4. Program structure is adaptable to youth feedback
5. Adults respond to conflict and crisis
6. Adults listen to young people and take them seriously.
One of Mycelium Youth Network’s newest projects, the Data Warriors program, was built from the ground-up and rooted in essential liberatory and critical pedagogies.
After each cycle of implementation and from week to week youth participants and adult educators have engaged multiple reflection and program evaluation processes, adapted in real time, iterated and documented a responsive and intergenerationally shaped youth-centering program logic model.
Access to the full toolkit may be requested by interested and aligned organizations. Implementation of toolkit activities may require additional educator, facilitator or organizational development.
MYN can provide training and technical assistance.
“It’s about research justice, leveling the playing field so youth voices and perspectives are included in the search for solutions to our health and climate problems.”
- Data Warriors Educator Interview
"5 Questions" Interview with Data Warriors Educator available on Medium.
What’s Next Health is a publication curated by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.