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Beloved Community Equity at Work Program Expands
As one of 17 awardees selected, New Mexico State University will lead a team to establish an Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center in the region to help underserved and overburdened communities with environmental justice concerns remove barriers and improve accessibility to federal grant application systems. The project plans to expand on Beloved Community’s Equity at Work Communities of Practice program. Beloved will lead the integration and bring together leadership teams from 20 to 30 organizations throughout the region. Participants will develop both interpersonal and institutional capacities to disrupt systemic racism and discrimination that manifests within their organization and its operations.
Are you encouraging this toxic behavior at work?
Code-switching has become a way for people to navigate uncomfortable places where their truest, most authentic selves have not been accepted by mainstream society, particularly in work environments. Guest author Monti Hill (she/her) shares her recommendations for how to interrogate professionalism in the workplace and center inclusion and belonging in your policies and practices.
Mapping Your Personal Equity Journey
The Equity Lens Map is an individual self-assessment tool designed to help organizations build effective, differentiated talent practices for team members at every level of the organization in order to advance diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI). The Equity Lens Map was developed to support individuals on their equity leadership journey by assessing levels of self-awareness, bias, allyship, internalized oppression, and fatigue. The Equity Lens Map provides trend data that allows organizational leaders to reinforce their institutional equity work plan with targeted supports for developing talented leaders throughout the organization.
Inside the Beloved Community IRB
The Beloved Community IRB is one of less than two dozen IRBs based at nonprofits in the US. We are one of even fewer IRBs housed at a Black womxn led nonprofit. This is important because the vast majority of IRBs are based at university and college campuses and research centers; by launching an IRB at Beloved Community, we disrupt existing systems of knowledge production and research approval. Under FDA regulations, an Institutional Review Board (IRB) is a group formally designated to review and monitor research involving ‘human subjects’. In accordance with FDA regulations, an IRB has the authority to approve, require modifications in (to secure approval), or disapprove research.
Breaking down the glass cliff
Highland Leader and founder of Beloved Community Rhonda Broussard shares the challenges of the “glass cliff”—when leaders, namely Black women, are moved into roles in times of chaos or crisis, and not equipped with adequate resources, staff, training, or support—and it’s at the cost of our mental and physical well-being. Read what else Gabrielle Wyatt, founder of the Highland Project, has to say about how can companies prioritize women who have been intentionally marginalized by institutions and systems.
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR)
With YPAR, young people are the researchers and changemakers. YPAR is an innovative approach to positive youth and community development based in social justice principles. YPAR can be done anywhere where youth are, including but not limited to schools, neighborhoods, and community organizations. This approach can be useful for any young people wanting to make a difference, and is an especially powerful approach for young people who are experiencing marginalization due to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, or other forms of oppression. Hear more from the Beloved Community DRIP team about why we prioritize YPAR in our approach to research below.
Using equity to build better organizations
At Beloved Community, when we create, we do so to fill a need. In 2018, we created the Equity Audit as a tool for organizations to comprehensively assess diversity, equity, and inclusion indicators across every function of their organization’s operations. Read more from our Anti-Racism Daily post here.
Reclaiming the right to rest
At Beloved Community, we are interested in how rest makes you more compassionate and allows you to connect with people as people more deeply. What does it mean to feel rest in your body? What can rest do for the ways that you show up for yourself and others? How does it unlock your ability to dream and create with abundance? There is so much available to us if we slow our brains and bodies down.
Let’s talk about sabbatical
“We have always named the impetus for our annual sabbatical as an opportunity for collective rest. It is also a way to honor the invisible labor that women do in the workplace and in our family structures.” Hear from Beloved Community leaders Rhonda J. Broussard and Stephanie Taylor as they discuss annual sabbatical + operationalizing collective rest.
“Welcome to Beloved”
“As a new team member, I was feeling hesitant to name the conflicting event. At previous workplaces, I was not always supported in my gender identity, sexual orientation, or LGBTQ+ activism. I knew Beloved was unabashedly pro-queer, but I was allowing my previous work experiences to influence me.” Read on as Erica Badowski reflects on a time when justice + joy coexisted for them at Beloved Community.