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The foundation has spent the past several years focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion with the initial goals of promoting an equitable environment, understanding the impact of racism on the communities and families we serve, and prioritizing equity and inclusion in every facet of our work, ultimately to help all children and families thrive.
These preliminary years have been insightful, and while we have made progress, we fully recognize that we have much more ground to cover in order to become an anti-racist organization. But we are committed to growing more in this area every day — and we are committed to taking this journey alongside
our partners.
This past fiscal year (July 2020/June 2021), we began a partnership with Leadership Montgomery (LM), a nonprofit based just outside the D.C. area, to provide race equity training and capacity-building supports to our programmatic partners, a cohort of philanthropic peer organizations, and our staff. As part of its mission to educate, inspire, convene and connect leaders, LM offers various workshops, programming and experiential learning to help leaders explore power in the workplace and create action plans to address disparities in their organizational culture. The foundation initially helped connect partners to LM’s existing educational opportunities and then provided coaching and technical assistance on communications and equity. These trainings were highly action-oriented — going beyond information-sharing and discussion-based curriculums to challenge participants to develop a road map to bring their learnings to life.
“Our team left these trainings really excited about what we had learned and the goals we had set together,” says Dr. Lesia Morton-Standish, Director of Elementary School Education at the North American Division (NAD) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. “I came into the first session without any expectation. I just wanted to learn and grow…and I really did that. And my colleagues did as well. Leadership Montgomery encouraged us to develop collaborative planning to support our team in developing DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) resources and training so we can implement our goals together.”
“We have had several colleagues take advantage of trainings with Leadership Montgomery over the years, myself included. We appreciated their perspectives, so much so that we knew we needed to pass along these learning opportunities to our program partners. The outcomes they’ve experienced so far have been really encouraging. Our work with Leadership Montgomery is still evolving, and we look forward to what’s ahead.”
Moving forward, in 2022, the foundation and LM plan to co-design additional supports — offering needs assessments and tailored trainings to address the findings.
Henrena Brunson, Senior Manager, Equity, Inclusion and HR Operations at the foundation, reflects on the partnership with LM and its collaborator Wayfinding Partners. “We have had several colleagues take advantage of trainings with Leadership Montgomery over the years, myself included. We appreciated their perspectives, so much so that we knew we needed to pass along these learning opportunities to our program partners. The outcomes they’ve experienced so far have been really encouraging. Our work with Leadership Montgomery is still evolving, and we look forward to what’s ahead.”