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One way to ensure that the policies you’re developing or reforming will have a positive impact on the lives of the people you’re trying to help is to make sure you have people from that community *at the table* *from the beginning* when you’re making decisions.
It’s so frustrating, time and again, to be pulling up a chair later, after key decisions have been made, and have to spend energy explaining why what y’all are doing is not going to accomplish what you think it will.
It’s so tiring to have to remind people over and over and over again of the unintended consequences. It’s no longer gratifying to get yet another “oh! We didn’t think of that!”
We KNOW you didn’t think of that. Y’all rarely do. But you know who DOES think of that? WE do. Because our lives depend on it. Because we’ve already experienced it. And we don’t think anyone else should have to endure what we did if it’s unnecessary that they do so.
