By Tigress Osborn, NAAFA Board Chair

NAAFA Friends, we made it through another year!

I began my term as Board Chair in January despite my family and I having Covid. While it wasn’t the way I expected to start off in this role, fat community showed me so much love and support during my healing that I was reminded of all the ways we show up for each other in this movement. With the support of my fellow board members and other NAAFA volunteers, we still managed to get the ball rolling for the year, and we’re going to keep it rolling right on into 2022!

As I reflect on this year, I’m so proud of folx on the NAAFA team at every level, not only of our accomplishments, but also of the ways we have challenged each other, worked through difficult issues, grown and created opportunities for others to grow. We got soooooo much done this year. I’ve outlined some highlights here, but they are really only a fraction of all we achieved. We hope that our work is evident to our community, and more than that, we hope each of you finds it meaningful in one way or another. 

Outreach and Community

• We hosted our first-ever Fat Liberation Month including a logo contest, a kickoff performance by Angry Fat People, webinars, tarot reading, a writing workshop, a trivia game, and a virtual mixer, as well as other educational resources and special blog posts.

• In the spring, we convened what we believe to be the first joint meeting of leadership from fat liberation organizations with national membership: the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH), the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, Fat Legal and Rights Education Project (FLARE), Fat Rose, Fat Women of Color, Nobody is Disposable, and Nolose. We met again this fall, and we hope to meet quarterly in 2022. 

• We created a special COVID-19 webinar series exploring the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on fat people individually and collectively.  

• We increased our social media presence, including more than doubling our Instagram following. 

• The Future of NAAFA Committee (FONC) initiated numerous new projects, including the creation of new support materials to assist fat people in end of life planning (stay tuned for the launch of these resources in the next few weeks). 

• Recipients of support from our Fat Community Fund Mini-Grant Program launched a variety of fat-positive projects, with several still to be completed in early 2022. 

Intersectionality

• Feedback from Board Member Elaine Lee and others in our community pushed us to examine how scheduling Fat Liberation Month in May distracted focus from Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. This led to better planning for Latinx Heritage Month and Indigenous Heritage Month later in the year. We’re moving Fat Liberation Month to August in 2022, and next year we’ll be planning specific programming for more identity month celebrations while also working to ensure that we’re highlighting and supporting fat people of all identities whether it's “their” month or not. 

• We increased accessibility by partnering with Pro Bono ASL, who now provide ASL interpreting for all of our webinars. We added captioning to our live online events and we are in the process of creating transcripts for our video offerings. We also added image descriptions to our social media posts. 

• Our board underwent training on “Understanding Social Oppression Through the Lens of Cultural Humility.” Led by Shilo George of Łush Kumtux Tumtum Consulting, we developed a greater understanding of systems of oppression and the ways in which characteristics of white supremacy can create barriers to being a truly inclusive organization.  

• NAAFA Administrative Director Darliene Howell continued to compile monthly Anti-Racism Resources for our newsletter and website with a different focus each month. They are organized by subject at naafa.org for our community to utilize any time they want to engage in further learning. 

Leadership & Board Development

• Longtime Public Relations Director Peggy Howell passed the reins to Amanda Cooper, who now oversees making media connections and guiding our publicity. Peggy continues to serve as a board member-at-large and coordinates our monthly NAAFA Newsletter.

• Board member Marcy Cruz took on a new title– Director of Fashion Industry Relations. Marcy also hosted the first episode of our new fashion series, Ahead of the Curve, with more episodes to come in 2022. 

• Kathryn Hack wished us well as she moved on from the board in the fall. We wish her well, too, and look forward to continuing to see her thrive as an artist and fat liberation role model.

• We worked with several volunteer consultants to help us improve our board governance, strategic planning, and fundraising efforts. 

• We implemented a new board search process which engaged a wide range of our constituents as nominators, nominees, applicants, interviewers, advisors, evaluators, and finally, invitations to six new board members (see announcement in this newsletter and stay tuned for more Meet the Board news to come in early 2022). 

This year, we clarified our vision: a culture where all fat people are free, celebrated, and liberated from every form of oppression. As we continue to strive to be a more inclusive and more effective fat rights organization for all, we thank you for all the ways you support us on the journey to fat freedom!

We can’t wait to take on 2022 with you!

Tigress Osborn is the Community Outreach Director and NAAFA Board Chair. Tigress joined the NAAFA Board of Directors in 2015 and became Director of Community Outreach in 2017. She is the founder of Full Figure Entertainment in Oakland, CA and co-founder, with activist/blogger Nicholet Deschine Parkhurst of Redstreak Girl, of PHX Fat Force in Phoenix, AZ. Her professional background as a youth advocate, diversity educator, and equity and inclusion consultant informs the fat liberation activism she has engaged in since 2008.