Spotlight on HER Resiliency Center: Helping Young Women Achieve Their Goals Through Negotiation

Walking in the door of HER Space – HER Resiliency Center’s location in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore – you can immediately tell this is a place designed to help young women feel powerful and welcome, from the pink and purple décor, to the friendly staff, to the word they use for the women who come in: “peers.”

HER Resiliency Center is a survivor-led peer-based organization founded by Natasha Guynes that helps young women, including those who have experienced trafficking, homelessness, and addiction, to become self-sufficient and independent adults—and it’s also the latest partner organization to benefit from Negotiation Works’ negotiation and conflict resolution training.

HER began in 2015 and offers women from 18 to 25 a safe place to come for support, workshops, and counseling to assist those who have experienced trauma with building meaningful and successful lives.

“Our big thing is self-advocacy,” said Michaela Murry, the Skills and Strengths Facilitator at HER. “Helping women to be more independent because we want them to become self-sufficient—we are here to hone in on their goals.”

H.E.R. Resiliency Center participants enjoying a negotiation lesson

Michaela said that as the peers work to improve themselves, they often need to meet with social services offices, landlords, and others, and engaging in effective negotiation is key to obtaining a good outcome. The Negotiation Works class is “showing them other avenues about how to speak for themselves,” she said.

Negotiation Works began teaching at HER earlier this year, and it’s the organization’s first partnership in Baltimore.

The new class is being co-taught by Melissa Reinberg, Negotiation Work’s executive director, and Sheryl Sears, a new instructor teaching with Negotiation Works for the very first time.

Sheryl says she really enjoys working with the young women at HER. “They’re lively, they’re interested, they’re engaged, they’re vocal.”

She pointed out that many of the participants have been through some extremely difficult life challenges, despite their age. “One of the hardest things is hearing from them when they share personal experiences,” she said. “As young as they are, they have had to navigate some rough terrain.”

But one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching the class, she said, is how eager and engaged the participants are in learning these life skills. From the very first class, she said, “They so immediately saw the practical application,” adding that by the second week of class students were reporting back how they had already tried some of the skills they were learning in their personal lives.

Sheryl has a long background in mediation and she said that she was drawn to teach with Negotiation Works by her own experiences working with people who struggle with handling difficult situations through negotiation. “When I’m out in the world I’m constantly thinking, I wish people had these skills!”

Negotiation Works partnered with HER after both organizations participated in a cohort of like-minded nonprofits who all received capacity building grants from the DC Office of Victim Services and Justice Grants (OVSJG).

David Schultz, the executive assistant at Negotiation Works, was part of a group participating in a discussion about partnerships when the leader of the group pointed out that Negotiation Works and HER would be a great match to work together. David highlighted how partnerships like the one with HER allow Negotiation Works to share the organization’s training with people from many historically marginalized groups, calling the HER partnership “a perfect fit.”