Walking The Path

Like many of you and the places you work, worship, recreate, and even shop, we’ve spent the past few months reckoning with our long legacy of racial inequity. As a team, we’ve been learning, reading, sharing, and planning. As Inclusionistas, we are committed to deeply understanding how race and other dimensions of diversity intersect with and impact the work we do on behalf of kids and families. It’s the perfect time to recommit to justice and equity.

New Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Webpage:

You can find our statement and outline of the first steps on our journey here on the new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion page on our KIT website. While we list a handful of commitments to both learning and action, I am sure that there is a lot we still don’t know or understand. Part of our journey will be updating our plan as we learn together.

Our Journey:

So far, in addition to our team member’s independent learning through reading books, joining groups, and attending online events, here is what we have done collectively so far:

• We have formed a diversity, equity, and inclusion task force, co-led by our Board Secretary Safaya Fawzi and Education & Training Specialist Greg Johnson.
• Seven of us are currently enrolled in a 3-month course called “The Equity Journey,” offered by the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance.

Please consider this the first of many updates, which I imagine will come on a quarterly cadence.

When I speak at conferences and share my story of how I became an advocate for inclusion, I talk about a personal experience I had in a classroom. I always say something like, “once you have seen injustice, you can’t unsee it. You have to act.” But, before you act, or perhaps as you act, there is a process of learning, of understanding, of becoming someone who sees the world in a different way than you did before.

Your responsibility is to use whatever privilege, power, or influence you have to make change. As advocates for inclusion, we take this responsibility very seriously.

We thank you for your support as we walk this path together.