PABNEEG 2026 Community Update

Hmong Women Lead, a PABNEEG program launched with early support from the Colorado Health Foundation, reached further this year than ever before.

In June, 150 people registered and showed up for our online summit focused on healing, leadership, culture, and systems change. The day opened with leadership from Colorado's 17th Judicial District Family Justice Center speaking about survivor support and coordinated community response, followed by four workshops and a panel discussion.

Grounding rooms staffed by trained facilitators remained open throughout the summit and for an hour after programming ended.

Conversations about culture, family, leadership, and healing can surface grief and difficult experiences. We do not believe it is responsible to open those conversations without thinking about what support people may need afterward. Building that support into the design is a standard we intend to keep.

Over just three months, community members hosted seven Hmong Women Lead coffee meetups, reaching 46 women across Colorado, Minnesota, and North Carolina. We did not run the gatherings. We supported hosts to bring women together in their own cities, through their own relationships, and on their own terms.

Every host completed a structured report. Every host rated the gathering five out of five, and every host said they would do it again.

Family and cultural identity came up at every gathering. Leadership and healing came up at nearly all of them.

And not one woman came through a flyer, an email, or our website. They came because someone they trusted invited them.

Across three different states, hosts independently identified many of the same barriers: childcare, transportation, language, and simply not having enough time.

The most common feedback? One hour was not enough.

That tells us where to go next. In 2027, we want to support more community-led gatherings throughout the year, give hosts more room to shape what happens in their own communities, and create more time for the conversations women are telling us they want to have.

Our most attended workshop at this year's Hmong Women Lead Summit was Susan Her's session on spiritual healing. Susan is a Master Shaman with eighteen years of practice. Given four workshops to choose from, more participants selected that session than any other.

We saw that as a question worth exploring more carefully.

This year, Hmong Women Lead entered its first IRB-approved research partnership with Dr. My Ngoc To of the School of Social Work at Colorado State University: Towards a Hmong Culturally and Spiritually Grounded Mental Health Engagement Framework, studying the relationship between Hmong women's spirituality and mental health.

For many Hmong women, spirituality is not separate from how wellbeing, distress, family, healing, and meaning are understood. Research that does not account for that context may miss an important part of people's lived experience.

What we learn, we share with others.

After seeing what was possible through this work, leaders in Aurora's Ethiopian community began exploring research partnerships of their own. We were able to share what we learned from our experience and help make the process a little easier to navigate.

The work they build from there is their own, shaped by their community and the questions that matter to them.

Interested in exploring research for your own community? PABNEEG is partnering with several universities while also helping community leaders understand and navigate the research process. We help communities prepare for research partnerships, understand what to expect, ask the right questions, and advocate for partnerships that respect their knowledge, time, priorities, and community.

If your community has a question worth studying or is interested in exploring a research partnership, contact Yangmee at yangmee@pabneeg.org.

The Chinook Fund invested in PABNEEG this year to develop a technology-supported resource focused on Hmong women's mental health, growing out of what we have learned through Hmong Women Lead.

We are building it carefully and with community input. Technology can make information and support easier to reach, but it should not replace care that needs to be human. We are designing with that distinction in mind, alongside community input and the research underway with Colorado State University.

We are grateful to the Chinook Fund for believing in this work and investing in our ability to build something shaped by the women and community it is intended to serve.

Some of the people holding a community together are not on any organization chart. They are the person a family calls first. A nonprofit founder. A cultural or faith leader. An organizer who has been showing up for fifteen years.

They carry an enormous amount, and many carry it largely on their own.

This year, PABNEEG built the Community-Led Network, a peer space for exactly those people. Membership is not defined by title or sector. It is defined by whether the people around you already trust you. Leaders have joined from North Metro Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Golden, and Greeley.

The design is grounded in the CHIME recovery framework, with connectedness, empowerment, and hope as guiding domains. It is not a curriculum and it is not a cohort. Members help set the agenda, and the network is being built for the long term.

We built it on a straightforward premise: when a trusted leader burns out, the trust does not automatically transfer to whoever comes next. It can leave with them, and a community can lose access and relationships that took years to build.

Community is not built through one event. It is built by continuing to show up.

Since January, our Online Community Check-In has opened every Sunday afternoon, with 38 people participating throughout the year. It is a consistent space to connect without the pressure to speak. Listening is welcome, sharing is optional, and we are clear about what it is not: therapy, counseling, or a crisis service.

In April, 20 community members joined local Lao-American author Amber Inthavong for our Making of a Story workshop, creating space for participants to begin putting family histories and personal stories on the page and how to self-publish it.

In May, 36 families joined us for a community tour of Westminster Fire Station 2, giving families an opportunity to meet local first responders and experience a public institution together in a welcoming setting.

In August, we joined the Colorado Hmong TopSpin Association at History Colorado's free community day, sharing Hmong top spin, culture, and community with a broader Colorado audience.

That same month, we partnered with our community center for our annual Back to School Bash, reaching more than 200 families with backpacks and school supplies before the start of the school year.

On August 30, 30 families, including 46 children, joined us at Orchard Park in Westminster for Nyob Zoo Fest 2026, supported by 13 volunteers.

Youth leadership was an important part of the day. Young volunteers took on meaningful roles throughout the event, helping with field-day activities, setup, vendor support, and the many small things that kept the day moving.

But the event created something for them, too. While families enjoyed the activities, young volunteers were also finding one another. Throughout the day, they connected, shared advice and experiences, talked through challenges they were facing in their own lives, and built relationships with other young people from their community.

That mattered to us. A successful community event is not only about what the public comes to see or do. It can also create space for young people to find connection and support in one another while contributing something meaningful to their community.

Part of community work is making sure community knowledge is present in the places where systems and services are being shaped.

PABNEEG serves on the Community Engagement and Education Workgroup for the Family Justice Center being developed by the 17th Judicial District Attorney's Office. In October, Executive Director Yangmee Lor will provide training on cross-cultural, trauma-informed practice during the center's orientation, with the training recorded for future staff onboarding.

Yangmee also serves on Colorado's 988 Crisis Hotline Enterprise Board by appointment of the Governor and as a non-attorney member of the 17th Judicial District Judicial Nominating Commission.

These roles extend community perspective into behavioral health, public safety, and justice systems while creating opportunities to bring what we learn back into our community work.

Since 2024, we have worked with the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) to help ensure community members have meaningful opportunities to participate in transportation decisions that affect their daily lives.

PABNEEG served on the North Federal Boulevard study's Steering Committee after being identified by DRCOG as one of the local organizations whose expertise was crucial to the project. We also partnered in community engagement, hosting a Hmong community focus group that brought community perspectives directly into discussions about how a future transportation service should work.

Our role was not simply to invite people into a meeting. We helped create a pathway between community experience and the planning process. Residents were able to share perspectives on transportation access, service areas, scheduling, safety, and what would make a new service practical for their families. At the same time, our participation on the Steering Committee allowed us to remain involved as service alternatives, priorities, and tradeoffs were considered.

That input became part of a larger community engagement process that informed the study's final recommendations. The final implementation plan also identifies PABNEEG as a potential community partner in helping residents learn about and access the future transportation service.

This is the kind of community engagement we want to continue building: helping people understand how decisions are made, creating trusted ways for them to participate, and staying connected as community input moves from conversation into planning and implementation.

For us, this work is connected to health and wellbeing. Transportation affects whether people can reach healthcare, food, employment, education, community spaces, and other resources that support healthy lives. When communities have meaningful opportunities to help shape the systems they rely on, their lived experience becomes part of how those systems are designed.

Some of the resources our communities need are already right here. The next step is helping more people find their way to them.

We are excited to work more closely with the Crossroads Community Center, including its English as a Second Language (ESL) classes and Celebrate Recovery, a supportive recovery community for people navigating life's hurts, habits, and challenges.

In the coming year, we look forward to building these partnerships and creating stronger pathways for Hmong and other BIPOC communities to access opportunities for learning, recovery, connection, and wellbeing close to home.

We are deepening youth and community wellbeing programming across North Metro Denver, Adams County, and Denver, with evaluation built in from the beginning.

We will continue our research partnership with Colorado State University and develop the Chinook-funded resource alongside what we learn.

We are continuing to grow the Community-Led Network as a long-term space for trusted community leaders to connect, learn from one another, and sustain the work they are already carrying.