A few weeks ago, I had the biggest smile on my face, reading our first press article about the Neythri story. You could say my heart was glowing — in immense appreciation for my co-founders Mythili and Chitra for blazing this path together, for our volunteer team of 100+ amazing South Asian women who, despite the number of demands on their time, bring so much energy to Neythri, and for our Member community without whom we wouldn’t be the emerging force we are today.
Neythri is a community organization, by and for South Asian womxn, rooted in a deep understanding of the South Asian cultural context and with a keen focus on bringing South Asian womxn together to help each other succeed. These words roll off my tongue now after months of distilling who we are and seeing that manifest in our programming. As effortless as it might feel today to describe Neythri, I’ve learned so much I didn’t know before about what it takes to build an impactful, sustainable, volunteer-run community organization.
As we head into the season of gratitude, I’ll share some of my key community-building learnings from members of our own Neythri team. These are certainly not exhaustive, but here they are:
Stay True to Your Brand Promise (And Define it Early) – Rupal Shah Hollenbeck
I will never forget an hour we spent with Rupal a few months ago when she asked us a set of questions to determine how to define Neythri’s brand. Rupal shared with us that a brand is a promise: a promise that is made based on the time, investment and journey a customer commits to you. A brand is more than just what you stand for – it’s a combination of domain (the space your brand occupies), personality (how would you describe your brand), reflection (what does your brand make someone feel like) and values (the basis upon which we operate) that build to our promise. We’ve made it a practice to revisit our brand framework on a consistent basis to make sure we are delivering on our promise to the best of our abilities. In moments of self-doubt or confusion, reading through our brand promise has helped me refocus and feel centered. More on the making of the Neythri brand framework here!
Be as Inclusive as Possible – Mythili Sankaran
I often remind myself that everyone on our team is working on Neythri as their second or third job –there’s something truly special about that, a sincere passion for our mission that fuels our work. Early on I used to feel saddled by my own expectations of perfection and what we ‘needed’ from everyone to operate at the highest level. But the truth is that we’re all one team because we deeply care about what we are building, and that is not to be taken for granted, even if things aren’t perfect here and there. My co-founder Mythili champions inclusivity — being open to what everyone brings to the table and finding more ways to include rather than exclude. From her I’ve learned that our team can strike the right balance between setting ground rules for what we need to be successful, but being flexible and opening our imagination to what truly passionate individuals can contribute.
Celebrate Everyone’s Superpowers – Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa
One of the first things I noticed when I started working with Ayesha is that she asked everyone on our working team to identify our “superpower.” What do you uniquely bring to our working team and how can you be helpful to your teammates outside of our core work? For her, it is design & branding + offering to be a sounding board to anyone who needs a brainstorming buddy. This simple exercise set the tone for our group that everyone’s diverse talents are valued, that we are here to truly uplift each other, and that helping each other can lead to meaningful relationships and opportunities to put our superpowers into practice. Feeling comfortable expressing our superpowers is what crystallizes the sisterhood I feel so strongly among our Neythri team.
Enable and Create Playbooks – Chitra Nayak
It wasn’t until my Neythri experience that I realized how amazing it feels to see members of our team lead projects they love from start to finish. It sounds pretty basic, but it’s the feeling of awe and pride of knowing that everyone on our team has the opportunity to express their leadership, creativity, and perspective in taking us forward. My co-founder Chitra has encouraged us from day one to enable our team to act and identify where everyone can take the lead so that we all have a shared sense of ownership and accountability and can scale. A tactical way to make this happen is by creating repeatable processes and playbooks that translate the thought processes that may seem intuitive to you into easily understandable steps. Small things can make a big difference – for example, we created an introductory script for our events that is now used by multiple members of our team to kick off our events and be visible ambassadors to Neythri. I’ve learned that great teams consistently prioritize sharing learnings, distributing responsibilities and enabling everyone to step up and take on new challenges.
And that’s a wrap, folks! Community building is a constant learning process and these are just a few of the core principles I’ve found helpful at this stage. Stay tuned for a second edition of community-building learnings (if you’ll have me!).
Comentarios