Summary of Project: SAMM is a series of activities aimed at supporting and growing peer mentorship communities for youth and adults with lived adoption histories.
When adoptees begin to develop an adoptee identity and reflect on how adoption has impacted them, a sense of confusion and dissonance can occur. Adoptees report being in community with adoptee peers helps with feeling safe, heard, and supported. Mentoring programs focused on supporting the adoptee community are one form of providing support to adoptees during their emerging awareness. Yet, adoption mentoring programs often find that the mentors volunteer because of their own identification as adoptees but may be unaware of the ways mentoring will activate/disrupt their own identities or understanding of adoption. This project was created with the understanding that adoptee mentors need support, training, and an additional separate level of peer support so they are able to effectively serve as mentors.
This project will use participatory research methods to better understand what adoptees need in mentoring and support.This project will support two community partners. The Adoptee Mentoring Society is an organization that provides virtual mentorship by adoptees, for adoptees. The program has organically become a mutual aid society for its members. Adoptees provide support, resources, and assistance to one another through a dedicated Slack channel and through virtual groups and individual sessions. The adoptees participating in the AMS programs serve as both mentees and mentors to each other. The collective action and solidarity are keys to this community and are serving to decrease isolation and address common challenges. AIRERoots is a community based program, offering leadership and capacity building and technical assistance to BIPOC adoptee communities.
This project will include up to two University of Washington students identifying as transracial adoptees and/or adoptees of color to participate as student trainees in the project activities. Students trainees will have the opportunity to learn research and evaluation theory, processes, and skills including: participate in conducting focus groups, learning thematic analysis, and developing dissemination skills.
This project has been co-created by JaeRan Kim (University of Washington Tacoma), Michelle Bagshaw (University of Washington Seattle), Angela Tucker (Adoptee Mentoring Society) and Beth Yu Simpson (AIREroots). The project will be implemented throughout 2024.
Link to the official webpage at University of Washington Tacoma.
JaeRan Kim 