Reportback from NSAC2026

Empowerment Self-Defense at NSAC by Meg

IMPACT Boston joined forces with the Empowerment Self-Defense Alliance to uplift our work and connect with survivors and advocates across the country. We got to connect with sister IMPACT organizations in Chicago, Santa Fe, and on the Turtle Mountain Tribal Reservation in North Dakota, as well as allied empowerment self-defense programs Prevention.Acton.Change in Portland, Maine, and Defend Yourself in Washington, DC.

Together we showed how empowerment self-defense skills can create safer meetings and events, give rape crisis center staff tools to assert their rights, de-escalate conflicts in libraries, and support Indigenous communities in healing from the trauma of colonization.

Rene, Josh and Meg teamed up with Mirian Amaya of JDI to present a workshop about our role in the statewide collaboration to support sexual assault and domestic violence advocates in asserting their rights when confronted by ICE. Meg and Josh also led a workshop on Prevention Strategies that Challenge Ableism. We got to talk about our prevention work in disability service agencies and adaptive sports as well as the importance of making healthy relationships and sex education accessible to special education classrooms.

We also got to hear Dr. Anita Raj of Tulane University present about the #MeToo study of sexual harassment and assault in the United States.One notable finding was that while the majority of sexual assaults are perpetrated by familiar people, most street harassment comes from strangers. This reinforces the importance of programs like IMPACT that give people the skills to address a wide range of harassment and abuse.

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"Carrying the Fire," on men's work in indigenous communities in Idaho by Josh

On the Tribal track, this year at NSAC, I got some critical framing and reflections to integrate into our men's work at Impact. Oh, umm... suprise! Soft launching our healthy masculinity course! More on that this winter. This Carrying the Fire workshop, though, had me contemplating my and men's connection to land, culture, ceremony, sharing our stories and much more.

It was led by Tai Simpson, who is a Nimiiuu Matriarch, Black, and the Executive Director of the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, Lenny Hayes, who is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton-Oyate of South Dakota, and Jeremy Nevilles-Sorell from the White Earth Nation and Winnebago. It is to them that I send many thanks.

They spoke about cultural revitalization and storytelling as violence prevention in their targeted communities. This mirrors what our partners at Turtle Mountain Impact are doing that has created a 50% reduction in violence in North Dakota. Towards this end, healthy masculinity, for Tai and crew, is cultivated in their groups by the thorough integration of boys and men into their communities. These guys share skills with other men, and boys, and in return they are valued for their contributions and know-how in their collective traditions, in their help in the preservation of their people. They share stories of their struggles and their duty to be accountable to one another, because they belong to one another and to the land from which they source their sustenance.

I ask myself, how can we at Impact foster such connection among men in our program (and everyone else in any of our programs, for that matter) without a shared heritage, or lineage of practices, or land? An answer to this, I think, lies in bringing participants into the planning process, and, at least, integrating their interests into the coursework and supporting events. I also think it has to do with imparting skills and practices, which we do at Impact in a strict sense, but more with a cultural lens. Not merely including music and art as fun, but in the writing of songs and poetry that reflect our challenges and celebrates our changes as men in society, for instance. What we need, it seems, is to come together in the exercising of our creative muscles to perform the task of taking on the risk of living more authentically, more openly with ourselves and the people around us, while improving our abilities to draw ourselves closer and closer to others and the land that holds us.

If you want to know more about our Healthy Masculinity work at Impact, you can email me at jalba@impactboston.org. I would enjoy a conversation about your work and how we can collaborate. See ya!

Supporting transgender survivors by Rene

I followed the LGBTQ+ track at NSAC 2026 to deepen my understanding of LGBTQ+ survivors. FORGE, a national nonprofit dedicated to providing a wealth of training, education, and resources for trans and nonbinary survivors and the folks who support them, led the majority of these sessions. They strongly advocated for supporting ALL survivors, regardless of budget cuts and policies dictating who is and isn’t included in grants. Our orgs are aligned in not complying in advance by leaving “target words” such as “transgender” and “LGBTQ+” on our websites, social media, and programming information so some of the most vulnerable survivors can still find us and get the information, resources, and training they need while knowing we are a safer place to access.

Transgender and nonbinary people experience sexual violence at a higher rate than cisgender people. These survivors go through some of the same trauma as non-trans survivors with the added layer of additional barriers to accessing care and support as the government attempts to legislate them out of public life and cut funding for services. Survivors are often made to feel as though their bodies aren’t their own. Many transgender people already experience that as a baseline due to how government, media, schools, and families often violently enforce gender norms and gender binaries. It was affirming to see that our practices are aligned with what FORGE and other providers and educators recommend when it comes to supporting transgender survivors.

We start with the basics. We introduce ourselves with our names and pronouns and invite students to do the same. We use whatever name and pronouns a student uses. We practice trauma-informed care. This means showing the skills before teaching and practicing them. This means students can opt out of any scenario that is too far outside of their window of tolerance. We do embodied work, which can healing and simultaneously be a challenge to all trauma survivors, especially for trans folks who might experience gender dysphoria or are being told by society and abusers alike that their bodies and identities are “wrong,” “too much,” or “not enough.” In our LGBTQ+ Core Public class, along with collaborations with trans-specific groups, we approach programming similarly to our Trauma Survivors class where we start off slowly, do even more adrenaline management, grounding, and make more time for reflection than in other classes. This is due to the disproportionate amount of trauma in those classes and we aim to be responsive to the corresponding needs. We want our classes to be empowering for ALL students and survivors!

For more information on how to best support transgender and nonbinary survivors, get a sneak peak of FORGE’s new Trans Survivor Toolkit, set to officially launch September 30, 2026!