There’s a bill in the South Carolina Senate that, if passed, would give all SC public school students free meals every day. Sponsored by Senator Katrina Shealy (R-District 23), Senator Stephen Goldfinch (R-District 34), Senator Mia McLeod (D-District 22) and Senator Marion Kimpson (D-District 42), S.148 seeks to ensure all students get free breakfast and lunch by providing guidelines for eligible schools to participate in the USDA Community Eligibility Program (CEP). It also establishes a state-level reimbursement program for those schools that are not eligible for CEP and extends the lunch period to 30 minutes.
“This bill addresses multiple issues that schools, students, and parents are facing these days,” says Meg Stanley, executive director of Wholespire. “I’m talking about school budgets, administrative workload, hunger, poor grades and behavior, school lunch debt, food shaming, social pressures and added financial stress for parents.”
74% of children are income eligible for federal nutrition programs (at or below 185% of poverty)
For the last two years, parents didn’t have to worry about paying for school meals and school administrators didn’t have to worry about tracking and collecting lunch money. During COVID-19, the USDA enacted national waivers that allowed many schools to provide free meals and get reimbursed by the federal government. Now that the waivers have ended, schools are now returning to collecting breakfast and lunch money, parents are having to decide how to pay for and prepare lunches and students with debt are being served a crusty sandwich instead of a balanced hot meal and getting picked on by their peers.
“For too many students, eating breakfast and lunch at school is the only time in their day that they get a nutritious meal,” says Stanley. “If we want to improve the quality of education in South Carolina and make it equitable, we have to start somewhere and that’s with the bellies of our students.”
Breakfast and lunch are important to every student’s health and classroom performance. Nutritious meals provide energy that fuels the brain and helps with attention span, which influences test scores and grade-level advancement. When a child is hungry, it’s difficult to pay attention to anything else.
In 2022, Wholespire published a blog called Everything you need to know about the Community Eligibility Program. It makes the case for eligible schools to apply for CEP. The same benefits of CEP can be applied to S.148. If passed, here’s how schools, families and students will benefit from receiving free meals at schools:
Benefits for Schools
Eliminates unpaid school debt. Every student gets free breakfast and lunch. Families don’t pay and administrators don’t have to worry about collecting money and managing accounts.
Reduces administrative burdens.
Improves school nutrition staff morale. Staff focuses more on nutritious meals and less on the nutrition budget.
Can generate revenue for school nutrition budgets. Oftentimes, CEP leads to an increase in breakfast and lunch participation, which increases revenue for the nutrition budget.
Can make it easier to serve meals in the classroom. Teachers only need to count the number of meals being served to students in their classroom rather than tracking free, reduced, and paid meals.
Benefits for Families and Students
Improves student attendance and advancement. A study published in the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition found significant benefits for students attending CEP schools, including higher attendance rates and more students advancing beyond 10th grade.
Fights hunger. The same study mentioned in the previous bullet also found students attending schools with CEP were nearly 3 times less likely to be food insecure.
Promotes equity and reduces stigma. CEP eliminates the out-of-pocket costs for families and reduces the stigma or embarrassment some students may feel by participating in the meals program. CEP also eliminates school lunch shaming, as no student can be turned away or given an alternative meal from failure to pay.
Reduces stress for families and students. Families with tight food budgets can rest assured that their child gets nutritious meals at school, reducing financial strain at home. Students don’t have to worry about paying for meals either.
Advocating for health in all policies is a priority for Wholespire, whose mission is to provide communities with proven and sustainable approaches that lead to increased access to healthy choices for ALL people. If you want to advocate for S.148, we encourage you to become a Wholespire advocate.
In my last blog, Steps to Advance Race Equity in the Workplace, I shared the Wholespire strategy for integrating race equity into our operations. I also provided a timeline of how we got started and remained committed to incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and race equity into all aspects of our work. In this post, I’ll explain one of our key steps toward advancing race equity in the workplace: completing an assessment.
What is an assessment and why is it important?
At Wholespire, we train youth advocates through The Healthy Young People Empowerment (HYPE) Project to identify, plan, and implement healthy eating and active living projects. In the HYPE training curriculum, there is a session that teaches youth the importance of assessing their focus area before starting a project so that they can have a clear understanding of the problem, whom it impacts, and how it shows up in everyday ways. This is the same approach that we used when planning our Race Equity and Inclusion (REI) strategies. We used several assessments to gather baseline data and provide guidance on our goal development. Eventually, they will be used to help us evaluate our work.
As a woman and a person of color, I personally find assessments to be a useful resource because they can help get everyone to a similar understanding of what problems exist. Now, if you are only looking for obvious examples of inequities in the workplace, such as hate speech and racial slurs, it may be hard to recognize where race inequity or racism exists in your organization. This could lead organizations to falsely believe that they should not have a plan to continuously assess and address equity within their organization.
In my last blog, I provided examples of the inequities that people of color may experience in the workplace related to raises, promotions and other income; equal pay; and a sense of belonging that are more subtle. Assessing can help us identify these more subtle examples.
Creating an Assessment
We really wanted to use the REI Workplace Guides to help guide our REI efforts because it was created by local partners, used by other organizations in South Carolina, and we participated in its development. When we looked for an existing assessment that would measure the indicators found in the REI Workplace Guides, we didn’t have much luck, so we created our own based on the guide’s 36 indicators. Additionally, we adopted and modified various other assessments that will be explained later in the blog.
We chose to collaborate with high school students and HYPE alumni because one of the long-term goals of The HYPE Project is to expose HYPE alumni to careers in public health and other aspects of community health improvement. We turned to the White Knoll High School HYPE alumni based on their successful HYPE project, the Fast Break breakfast program and the advanced learning program. We were confident that the students would grasp the concept of assessment and accept our challenge. After all, they learned about the importance of assessments during their HYPE training.
Six Assessments to Gauge DEI and Race Equity in the Workplace
The infographic below highlights the six assessments Wholespire used to establish goals and action steps for integrating race equity into the workplace.
Examples of Assessment Results
Our REI Organizational Assessment showed us where we are doing well and revealed areas that needed to be addressed. For example, on our staff inclusion survey employees indicated some of the areas we are doing well in are:
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important to our staff.
Our staff feel respected and valued by leadership and teammates, despite their differences.
Our staff can voice contrary opinions without fear of negative consequences.
Wholespire shows that diversity, equity, and inclusion is important through its actions.
My job performance is evaluated fairly.
The staff inclusion assessment also indicated areas of needed improvement, which became our starting point for goal development and action planning. Examples include:
I do not feel encouraged to participate in diversity, equity, and inclusion professional development.
I feel like my colleagues do not understand who I really am.
Wholespire is not committed to improving the diversity of its employees.
Wholespire’s policies or procedures do not encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Overall, what we learned from the various assessments is that we needed to continue in the areas that we’re doing well, but to also start focusing on establishing and communicating organizational policies related to REI, encouraging professional development for leadership and staff, and improving staff interpersonal relationships to move closer toward a truly equitable organization. We also realized that internal communication is imperative to staff understanding our policies and procedures, so we’ve focused on improving the way we communicate with all staff.
As we continue to implement our strategies and move closer to reaching our goals, our plan is to reassess our efforts, evaluate the reassessment results, and revise any assessment tools or strategies to help us achieve our goals. If you want to learn more about the Wholespire race equity in the workplace journey, visit our DEI webpage. It has complete information about our framework, as well as resources to explore. You can also find race equity resources on Options for Action.
Over the course of the past few years, corporate wellness strategies have been on the rise, and for good reason. When executed properly, they can not only improve the overall health of your workforce, they can also increase productivity and positively affect your organization’s bottom line. But what makes a wellness program effective, and what are companies doing to respond to the events of the last few years? Read on to learn more.
The Benefits of an Effective Corporate Wellness Strategy
Creating a plan to encourage healthy eating and active living among your employees will benefit not only them but your organization as a whole. Below are some of the major reasons why you may want to consider developing a corporate wellness strategy of your own.
Decrease in Absenteeism
Corporate wellness strategies can help create a more physically and mentally healthy workforce. A healthier workforce is far less likely to miss time on the job, meaning you can all but cross absenteeism off your list of things to worry about as the leader of your organization.
Combat Chronic Disease
A good corporate wellness strategy is a form of chronic disease prevention. With the proper resources, education, and support system in place, your staff can learn to take on healthier habits and avoid serious health issues.
Save Money on Healthcare Costs
A generally healthy staff is most likely going to require much fewer and less expensive medical costs than an unhealthy one. That means that investing in a corporate wellness program can ultimately save your organization money on healthcare and related expenses.
Creating an Effective Health Strategy in a Post-Pandemic World
Just like pretty much everything else over the course of the past year, corporate health strategies have been completely altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. With remote work becoming far more prevalent and mental health issues on the rise, organizations are going to need to adjust their wellness programs to reflect these changes and a number of others. Below are some of the major focal points of post-pandemic corporate health strategies.
● Increased telemedicine and video resources ● Greater access to mental health benefits ● Adjustment to the work-from-home model ● Increased support for those with chronic conditions ● Greater use of public health data
Although vaccines are being distributed and the world is slowly returning to normal, certain changes resulting from COVID-19 may be permanent. It’s imperative to acknowledge these changes in order to create an effective corporate wellness program.
Reaching Beyond the Workplace
Companies have an opportunity to positively affect community health with their wellness programs, too. By creating a workplace that values health, you can serve as a healthy eating and active-living model for other companies and to your community as a whole.
Your company could also take it one step further than that and partner with community organizations in order to engage in public health advocacy. Using your platform to do things like combat hunger in the state, take a stand against food insecurity and health disparities, and promote a healthy lifestyle can boost your community and your company’s reputation.
Ready to incorporate HEAL into your workplace? Contact us today [LINK TO CONTACT PAGE] and we can help outline your next steps and provide you with resources to get started.
In my last blog, Getting Started with Race Equity in the Workplace, I briefly explained diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and race equity and inclusion (REI) and why Wholespire is focusing on race equity in the workplace.
People of color experience inequities in the workplace in many ways. Here are a few examples that can show up in the workplace that may be more subtle than others.
Raises, Promotions, and Other Income: Race to Lead’s 2019 survey of more than 5,000 nonprofit staff found that “While both white people and people of color are called upon to take on additional projects, people of color are less likely to receive raises, promotions, and bonuses compared to their white counterparts.”
Equal Pay: According to the 2022 County Health Rankings National Findings Report, Black women will need to work 223 additional days beyond one year to earn the average annual salary of a white man and Hispanic women would need to work 299 additional days.
A Sense of Belonging: In their study The Power of Belonging: What It Is and Why It Matters in Today’s Workplace, Coqual found, “Nearly one in three Black employees (32%) and one in four Asian employees (23%) say they have felt out of place at work because of their race or ethnicity–more than one in seven Latinx employees (15%) say the same.”
When issues like these in the workplace go unaddressed, it can exacerbate the overall disadvantages that people of color may experience. For instance, the 2022 County Health Rankings National Findings Report links advancing health for everyone to specific strategies that can be addressed through workplace equity.
Oftentimes, when speaking to partners about advancing race equity, many say that they don’t know how or where to start. Although there are many resources available on race equity, figuring out where to start and how to operationalize it within your organization can be tough. That’s why I’m going to tell you about our journey.
I want to start by reminding you that Wholespire has a history of prioritizing equity in our policy, systems, and environmental strategic work in communities by helping partners prioritize and address health disparities. Prior to establishing a strategic intention focusing on race equity in the workplace, we were taking steps to help staff and chapters better understand how to incorporate race equity into their work. The graphic below is a timeline of the external work that we were doing to advance equity.
Through awareness, collaboration, and planning, we eventually began to understand the need to be more intentional about how we operate as an equitable workplace.
Step One: Develop A Common Understanding
Download the full timeline.
In 2020, we began our workplace efforts by making sure our staff, board, and partners had a common and basic understanding of equity. We started with training and activities to help all of us recognize and understand racial inequality and how we can address it.
First, our staff explored how our individual life experiences impact the ways we think and act. During three sessions of Welcome Table SC, Jennifer Gunter, Ph.D., interim director, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Director, Collaborative on Race, and Latesha Murray, co-facilitator for Welcome Table SC, led discussions to talk about and understand racial divisions that have hampered unity and social justice. The sessions offered a safe environment in which mutual respect, listening, and learning from one another were promoted. Our Board of Directors attended a similar training the following year.
This three-part series was a special opportunity for various SC health coalition leaders to help their coalition members integrate racial justice concepts into their community coalition processes by introducing relevant, actionable tools and frameworks. Participants were able to collaborate and share knowledge, exchange ideas, and get a better understanding of race equity to better serve South Carolina.
We continue to provide DEI and race equity training opportunities to our staff, board, and community coalitions on an ongoing basis.
Step Two: Put it on Paper
We spent three months virtually collaborating, brainstorming, and hashing out the Wholespire 2021-2023 Strategic Plan. The deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd and the early effects of COVID-19 happened in the months leading up to our strategic planning. During this time, it seemed as if everyone was talking about race equity, including us. This greatly informed our thinking during the strategic planning process.
As challenging as strategic planning might be, this one was especially crucial. Because equity was already a core value of Wholespire, we debated whether it should be specifically stated as a strategic goal. We wanted our strategic plan to include concrete steps toward advancing DEI with a focus on race equity, so we decided that including it would be the best approach. In my previous blog, I discussed why equity work should lead with race.
We also stated the tool we would use to steer our efforts would be The Promoting Race Equity and Inclusion (REI) in the Workplace Guide, a tool created by the Race Equity and Inclusion (REI) Partnership of South Carolina. I had the privilege of representing Wholespire on the REI Partnership and participating in the creation of this valuable tool.
Download the full timeline.
Step Three: Complete an Assessment
We know the importance of assessments and we needed to find out how our organization was doing based on the 36 indicators in the REI in the Workplace Guide. But, we didn’t have an assessment tool.
With the assistance of some youth partners, we created our REI Organizational Assessment using the indicators found in the REI in the Workplace Guide. I’ll tell you more about our youth partners and why we chose to work with youth in my next blog post.
The race equity indicators from the REI in the Workplace Guide (for practitioners) are grouped into four levels:
Personal Level, including biases both implicit and explicit.
Interpersonal Level, including respect and relationships.
Organizational Level, including workplace culture, norms, and policies.
Community Level, including partners and funders.
After assessing ourselves, we found that we also needed to collect baseline data in other areas for future goal-setting:
Staff inclusion survey – Assesses staff’s feelings of inclusion.
Board member demographic survey – Assesses the demographics of Board members.
Grant applicant demographic survey – Assesses demographic data of grant applicants.
Funders equity focus group – Explores equitable grantmaking practices.
Step Four: Set Goals
According to Race to Lead, “Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts are becoming more frequent in nonprofit organizations and have raised awareness around issues of race and race equity. However, we found that this increased awareness is not translating into measurable change.”
At Wholespire, we felt it was very important for us to put our energy into REI efforts that would actually lead to change, so we identified goals and created an action plan. I began meeting weekly with our Executive Director to brainstorm and set goals based on the results of our assessments, current activities, and organizational capacity. The assessment results showed that we were doing satisfactorily in some areas of race equity, but we quickly realized there was work to be done in other areas. We knew that we could not address everything at once, so we had to prioritize while being flexible.
You’ll get more details about our goals and action plan in a later blog, but for now I’ll share the nine overarching goals. Keep in mind that most of our goals address only race equity, while others address both DEI and race equity.
The Board and staff will complete professional development opportunities that promote self-awareness, personal growth, and a safe working environment with a DEI and race equity lens.
Cultivate an organizational and workplace culture that fosters respect and relationships.
Incorporate DEI and race equity into leadership strategies and tasks as part of regular operations.
Implement and evaluate recruitment and hiring practices established during the previous year.
Create the structure of the intern program (to increase the placement of students of color).
Promote race equity norms and goals to ensure all staff at Wholespire feel valued and treated fairly.
Review policies with a race equity lens and track and monitor race equity goals.
Ensure meaningful participation from communities of color in all aspects of Wholespire’s operations.
Promote equity as a standard in Wholespire’s direct and indirect grantmaking processes.
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts are becoming more frequent in nonprofit organizations and have raised awareness around issues of race and race equity. However, we found that this increased awareness is not translating into measurable change.”
Race to lead
Step Five: Track Progress
We are now tracking the progress of our race equity work by monitoring activities from our action plan. We achieve this in a variety of ways, including having staff add specific responsibilities to their individual work plans and conducting regular check-ins. During my weekly meetings with our Executive Director, we review the progress being made in our action plan by documenting status updates and next steps.
We will reassess ourselves at different points in time to see if there are changes in responses to the assessment and surveys. We’re still figuring out how to effectively coordinate and track progress on the action plan across the organization and will continue to fine-tune this process. Our plan is to work with an evaluator in 2023 to further evaluate our progress.
Step Six: Reflect/Evaluate
Now what? I think that is one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves during reflection or evaluation of our race equity goals.
Consider the composition of Wholespire’s Board of Directors. The number of individuals of color on our board increased from 1% in 2020 to 31% in 2022. Now what? In what ways should we evaluate the experiences of people of color on our board? How are we going to support and increase their participation? Are we creating an environment in which everyone feels safe and accepted? Asking questions such as these will help us develop our goals and strategies moving forward.
Much of this work for us was figuring things out as we go, and when speaking with others on this road, they’ve had to do the same. In moving forward, we are considering our best options and capacity to fine-tune our assessments, document our approach, and evaluate the results of our race equity efforts.
Even though there can be uncertainty when getting started with race equity in the workplace, we’ve taken some major steps given our small staff. We dedicated 40 percent of one full-time employee to this area of our work. We actively participate in local and statewide race equity workgroups, and we are strategically including DEI and race equity in all areas of our work.
In my next post, Part 4: How do you assess race equity in the workplace?, I’ll go over how we used various assessments to get a better understanding of where we were and where we needed to go.
If you want to learn more about how Wholespire is incorporating race equity in the workplace, visit our DEI webpage. It has complete information about our framework, as well as resources to explore. You can also find race equity resources on Options for Action.
School meals are an essential part of every student’s day. Research by Tufts University shows that for many kids, the meals they eat at school are the most nutritionally balanced meals they get all day. Why is this so important now that COVID-19 lockdowns are over and people are back to their somewhat normal routines?
Because the pressure of paying for school meals, after a two-year hiatus, is back and creating a greater challenge for many parents to find room in their budgets to ante up.
According to the SC Department of Education’s 2021-2022 student enrollment report, 61% of students live in poverty. That’s based on all 74 school districts in the state, composed of 1,200 schools that serve over 777,000 students in Pre-K through 12th grade.
A solution for parents is to apply for free or reduced school meals through their school administrators. An even better solution is for school districts or schools to apply for the USDA’s Community Eligibility Program (CEP).
What is CEP?
According to No Kid Hungry, CEP is a unique school meal funding option of the National School Lunch Act that makes it possible for schools to provide free meals to all students. That means no more free or reduced lunch applications, fewer administrative burdens, and fewer social stigmas for students to deal with at school.
How does CEP impact families and students?
Improves student attendance and advancement. A study published in the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition found significant benefits for students attending CEP schools, including higher attendance rates and more students advancing beyond 10th grade.
Fights hunger. The same study mentioned in the previous bullet also found students attending schools with CEP were nearly 3 times less likely to be food insecure.
Promotes equity and reduces stigma. CEP eliminates the out-of-pocket costs for families and reduces the stigma or embarrassment some students may feel by participating in the meals program. CEP also eliminates school lunch shaming, as no student can be turned away or given an alternative meal from failure to pay.
Reduces stress for families and students. Families with tight food budgets can rest assured that their child is getting nutritious meals at school, reducing financial strain at home. Students don’t have to worry about paying for meals either.
What are the benefits for schools?
Eliminates unpaid school debt. Every student gets free breakfast and lunch. Families don’t pay and administrators don’t have to worry about collecting money and managing accounts.
Reduces administrative burdens. Administrators apply for CEP once every four years.
Improves school nutrition staff morale. Staff focus more on nutritious meals and less on the nutrition budget.
Can generate revenue for school nutrition budgets. Oftentimes, CEP leads to an increase in breakfast and lunch participation, which increases revenue for the nutrition budget.
Can make it easier to serve meals in the classroom. Teachers only need to count the number of meals being served to students in their classroom rather than tracking free, reduced, and paid meals.
Who is eligible for CEP?
School districts or individual schools with at least 40% of “Identified Students” are eligible. The Identified Student Percentage are students who are approved for free meals without an application because they are:
Enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), or Medicaid,
Living in a household where another student is enrolled in one of the previously mentioned programs, or
Homeless, migrant, runaway, in foster care, or enrolled in Head Start or Early Head Start.
What if my school district says it doesn’t qualify?
Some school districts may not qualify for CEP because the total enrollment of all the schools in the district does not meet the Identified Student Percentage of at least 40 percent. In this case, individual schools can apply for CEP if they meet the required percentage. Contact your school principal or school nutrition administrator and ask them about CEP.
Why don’t all school districts in a single county qualify for CEP?
In some cases where there are multiple school districts in one county, district-wide eligibility for CEP varies because CEP is based on household income. In Richland County, Richland One participates in CEP, so all students get free breakfast and lunch. In Richland School District Two, the district is not eligible for CEP because its Identified Student Percentage is less than 40 percent. Richland One is composed of more low-income families as opposed to Richland Two. This is an unfortunate fact that negatively impacts struggling families, school equity, and student mental health.
Are there alternatives for school districts, schools, and families that don’t qualify?
Provision 2 of the National School Lunch Act enables any school to provide free meals to students. There are no eligibility requirements under Provision 2 as there are with CEP, and also unlike CEP, you can choose to offer universal breakfast and/or lunch.
Non-pricing is another funding option for universal free school meals where schools have funding support from the local government, school board, or private sources. Meals are served free to all students, and meals are counted and claimed by fee category. The difference between federal reimbursement and program costs would have to come from non-federal funding.
Honest conversations about race equity are challenging leaders, especially nonprofit leaders, to dig deeper. One of the ways that Wholespire is digging deeper is by asking: What internal work also needs to be done? How do we become a more equitable workplace that’s living out our mission? At Wholespire, we developed a strategic intention related to DEI, but we are closely focusing on race equity within that intention. In this post, I will explain Wholespire’s path to making diversity, equity, and inclusion, specifically race equity, a priority within our workplace.
What are Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) and Race Equity and Inclusion (REI)?
Let’s start with some definitions. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is often defined based on its three components (DEI Extension).
Diversity is the presence of differences that may include race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, language, (dis)ability, age, religious commitment, or political perspective.
Equity is promoting justice, impartiality, and fairness within the procedures, processes, and distribution of resources by institutions or systems.
Inclusion is an outcome to ensure those that are diverse actually feel and/or are welcome.
Race equity is the process of eliminating racial disparities and improving outcomes for everyone. It is the intentional and continual practice of changing policies, practices, systems, and structures by prioritizing measurable change in the lives of people of color (Race Forward).
Why Lead with Race Equity?
In 2020, while Wholespire was drafting the 2021-2023 strategic plan, racism and social justice were catching the attention of mainstream news outlets and the world. This was mostly due to the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd and the health disparities that became more visible as a result of COVID-19. As a part of commitment to racial justice, our staff and board felt strongly that our core value of equity should be included in our strategic plan. While equity was already an underlying component of our work, giving it its own strategic focus made it more intentional. Focusing on race equity meant that we would identify and track specific actions.
Racial inequities persist in every system across the country, without exception.
Racial inequities are found within other dimensions of identity — income, gender, sexuality, education, ability, age, citizenship, and geography.
Inflaming racial tension has been a deliberate political strategy by those seeking to maintain their own power.
Wholespire’s Steps to Advancing Race Equity
Equity is not a new value for Wholespire, but we saw the need to be more intentional with incorporating equitable practices and procedures into how we operate as a workplace. We created a timeline of the steps taken toward advancing race equity in our workplace. It has taken some time to achieve what we have so far, but we’ve been intentional about it. Below are some steps you can take to advance race equity in your workplace:
Develop A Common Understanding. Professional development and personal growth are essential for staff, board members, and partners to truly understand why DEI and race equity are important.
Put it on Paper. Document, document, document. Include DEI and race equity in your strategic plan or policies.
Complete an Assessment. Review your current DEI and race equity practices to identify areas that need work.
Set Goals. Use your assessment results to create measurable goals for growth.
Track Progress. Monitor your work regularly and make adjustments where needed.
Reflect. At the end of your reporting period, evaluate your work toward meeting your goals.
Resources
There are countless resources and tools available to individuals and organizations who are interested in advancing race equity. One of the challenging things is reviewing those resources and tools to determine what is best for your organization. Below are some of the trainings, assessments, and resources that Wholespire has used in our race equity work.
When I participated in a race equity facilitator’s training led by the Equity Literacy Institute, I learned that race equity work should be about eliminating racism. We were given tools to shift our thinking about racism.
One shift is from viewing racism as an occasional incident that needs to be addressed when witnessed or reported to viewing racism as ordinary and affecting everything and requiring ongoing proactive action. This is, in my opinion, the most important lesson from this blog.
Every organization or coalition has a starting point and should be tackling race equity on a regular basis. Here are some questions to think about:
Where does racism exist in the way my organization conducts business?
What is my organization doing to combat racism in the workplace on a regular basis?
How does my company ensure that Black employees feel safe and welcome?
Are our DEI and race equity efforts reducing racism in the workplace?
Wholespire’s race equity efforts are not temporary. We will continue to evolve and provide a more inclusive environment for all staff and board members. We recognize that we will not always “get it right,” and that we will make mistakes, but we strive to be a workplace where everyone feels secure, respected, and valued. We hope that our goals, activities, outcomes, and support motivate our chapters, partners, and stakeholders to follow suit.
My next blog will focus on the six steps outlined above. If you want to learn more about Wholespire’s race equity in the workplace journey, visit our DEI webpage. It has complete information about our framework, as well as resources to explore. You can also find race equity resources on Options for Action.
