Year-end Summary Letter from the Doulas

To the GRP (soon to be the organization formerly known as GRP) community – 

We, your Name Change “doulas,” wanted to write a message to close out our year of “Transitions,” and to provide you all with an update on the name change process. We share a lot about the process below, but the primary takeaway is that we do not yet have a name to share with you all. We have decided to give a bit more breathing room to accommodate the range of opinions, desires, and needs that have come up over this past year, and to ensure that our new name is one that we feel excited about and ready to embody. 

We were so fortunate to have had over one-hundred community members engage in the Transitions process that we announced earlier this year. Through in-person town halls, virtual one-on-one meetings, C.A.R.E Lab: Transitions Edition, and various “name-storm” workshops and events, we heard many important things from the GRP community. Some of these findings are outlined in our mid-year report, available here. These conversations led us to a few names that we then sent out to community members in a survey; included in these names were We Rock Philly and Sounds of Love and Resistance (SOLAR). 

We have, since the beginning and with community support, planned for the board and staff to make the final decision. This is where we are today: working with board and staff to turn what came from our community process into a final and official name. 

This final stage of the name change process highlighted a central tension between expansion and possibility, and the question of history, legacy, and structure. Girls Rock Philly is an organization with a rich emotional memory, and is part of a larger network of “Girls” Rock camps (Girls Rock Camp Alliance). It felt important to retain a relationship to the old name. And a name that is recognizable is also a name that we can trust will make sense to future community members, young people and their caregivers who would want to participate in camp and other programming. 

At the same time, we - doulas, staff, and the board - wanted the organization to feel like expansion and change were possible. That is, we wanted the new name to serve as a container for future programming, including and beyond summer camp. We wanted a name that signaled an intention and held the organization accountable to a more inclusive future. 

In continued conversations with staff and board, we have yet to come to a name that resolves this tension, that both feels grounded in the history, legacy, and structure of the organization while also allowing space for possibility and change now and in the future. 

As doulas, one of the things that we have been reminded of by this process is that Transitions - life transitions, individual (gender or other) transitions, and even musical transitions - work on their own timeline. As trans folks, we know that some days we feel complete clarity, while other days we feel like this (sometimes uncomfortable) interstitial place will never end. The name change process has felt similarly messy and challenging, and yet, we have learned so much from the brilliant community members, including young people who are current or former campers, as well as from the staff and board, about taking the time to listen and learn. With this in mind, we believe we need to slow down a bit. Our plan, therefore, is to return and finish the name change process in the new calendar year (2022). 

While we trust that this is the right decision for this brilliant, beautiful, and creative community, one bittersweet result of this decision is that we will return to the new year with one fewer Name Change Doula. V Varun Chaudhry, who has worked alongside Sam Chenkin for this calendar year, had always planned to leave at the end of 2021 – we just thought we would have a name by then. We (V and Sam) have spent the year not only getting to know all of you (including the board and staff members who help the organization to survive), but also getting to know each other as facilitators and as people. We have built trust between the two of us, to the point where we both feel confident that Sam can facilitate the process from this point onward. 

As always, we are available to answer questions and clarify any aspects of the process, if you want to reach out at transitions@girlsrockphilly.org. We thank you for your patience, vulnerability, and grace throughout this process, and look forward to the next steps to come in early 2022.  

Onward, 

V & Sam, your 2021 name change Doulas