Ever wished you had a more effective way to talk about "race"
in various professional and personal settings? If so, be sure to explore the Race Matters online toolkit where you'll
find ready-made resources on "race" and its impact on education, wellness,
media, and civic participation. A part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's "Knowledge
Center," the toolkit provides free, downloadable documents and power point
presentations complete with talking points and discussion questions. The
materials cover a wide range of topics including "System Reform Strategies" and
an "Organizational Self Assessment." There is also a series entitled "Unequal
Opportunities" which highlights issues such as school readiness, health and
wellness, and family and community economic success. This is an invaluable resource
and site for anyone working to eradicate racial disparities.
Pulse Wire is an online community where women from around the world can come
together to enact social change. The site offers a variety of avenues for women
to connect with others committed to transforming their communities. "Voices
Rising" is a forum where women can share their personal stories about the
events that both influence who they are and inspire what they do. Be sure to
check out the "Resource Exchange" and "Sharing Solutions" sections to learn
about the innovative ways in which women are actively shaping our world. Pulse
Wire is part of World Pulse, a media enterprise that reports on global events
through the eyes of women and produces World
Pulse Magazine. This site, which interacts with mobile phone technology, is
breaking down barriers to communication and giving women around the globe, from
New York City to small villages in Africa, a unique way to connect and collaborate.
In The News
The Journey Inward to
Eliminate Oppression
Diversity
practitioners and social change agents often focus their work on understanding
others as a vehicle to create inclusion and promote justice. When our attention
begins by looking out rather than in, we may undermine our own effectiveness
and power.
On this episode of Diversity Matters®, Nanci joins co-hosts Dr. Richard Friend and Judy Seidenstein to discuss her unique approach
of helping people give voice to the stories of their own lives in order to
change the world and eliminate oppression.
We examine the importance of understanding and addressing internalized
oppression, the role of "adultism" as the root of all other forms of
oppression, and the need to have an internal home base before we can reach out
across our differences as true partners.
This
episode is available now to listen on demand at Diversity Matters®.
Please
tune in!
There's a special opportunity on April 20th and 21st
to join Nanci, Barb MacKay, and Shoshanna Cogan as they co-facilitate a two-day
Pre-conference Training for the International Association of Facilitators North
American Conference in Vancouver, BC. The conference is April 22nd
& 23rd and the theme is "Explore Diversity." Nanci will also be
presenting a concurrent session during the conference.
IAF Canada
April 20th & 21st 2009
"You Don't Know What You Don't Know: The Facilitator's Path to
Authentic Cross-Cultural Practice"
Facilitated
by
Nanci Luna Jimenez, CPF©,
Barbara J. MacKay, CPF©
and Shoshanna Cogan
2 Day International Association of Facilitators North American Conference
Training Workshop
Register HERE Or contact Kati for
more information. Be sure to also check out Nanci's colleague,
Kathleen Rice, Ph.D., CTF
as she presents Making the "Invisible"
Visible: White Awareness and Facilitation on April 20, 2009. Drawing on the findings of
a series of interviews with a diverse group of professional facilitators, organizational
development consultants, educators, and non-profit leaders, this session will
explore the relationships between white social conditioning, white privilege
and facilitation. You will engage experientially, compassionately,
self-reflectively and courageously with the four themes of this study:
impacts of white social conditioning on facilitation; re-examining
established facilitation practices through the lens of white conditioning and
white privilege; preventions and interventions for facilitating difficult
diversity-related moments; and strategies for increasing personal awareness
of the opportunities and challenges white social conditioning and white
privilege can bring to facilitation. Participants will also develop a plan
for continuing their capacity building efforts. |
Download this Newsletter (PDF)
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The Strength to Love
By Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
January is the perfect month to highlight The Strength to Love, a collection of
sermons written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Initially hesitant to publish
this work because he felt sermons were created for the ear and not the eye, Dr.
King created a powerfully moving book that exemplifies his philosophy of
non-violence. With titles such as "Love in Action," "A Tough Mind and a Tender
Heart," and "Loving Your Enemies," these sermons clearly demonstrate Dr. King's
commitment to the transformative power of love. It brings to mind a line from
Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem, "Praise Song for the Day," in which she
writes, "what if love is the mightiest word of all?"
With each sermon, Dr. King inspires his readers to examine
with a 'toughmind' the ways in which our individual and collective actions can
help to root out what he terms "the triple evils of racism, war, and poverty."
In the first piece, "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart," Dr. King describes his
idea of toughmindedness vs. softmindedness. He points to softmindedness, the
state of accepting conclusions without examining the facts, as a predisposing
factor to racism as it makes people susceptible to false information about
certain racial and ethnic groups. This misinformation serves as a doorway to
policies that discriminate based on incorrect assumptions about a group's
abilities, customs, or morality. In contrast, being toughminded enables people to
carefully investigate information and base their conclusions on accurate
knowledge.
In the sermon "Transformed Nonconformist" Dr. King
eloquently describes the attributes and characteristics of effective social
change agents. Rather than become rigid and impatient, Dr. King encourages us
to "to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit."
He goes on to discuss the fortitude that is necessary when leading the charge
for social transformation. He writes, "the transformed nonconformist recognizes
that social change will not come overnight, yet he works as though it is an
imminent possibility." With this sentence, Dr. King sends an inspirational
message that reminds us that hope is what fuels us to continue working towards
what we want to change in our world.
The Strength to Love
is a life-changing book and a trustworthy guide for anyone interested in the
areas of personal, political, and community transformation. At LJS we continue
to be inspired by Dr. King's words, four decades after they were written. This
book is the perfect companion as we enter into a new age; may we all be energized
and hopeful for the changes we will enact.
The Real Wealth of Nation: Creating a Caring Economics
By Riane Eisler
InThe Real Wealth of Nations:
Creating a Caring Economics, renowned social scientist Riane Eisler offers
a well-timed plan to overhaul our economic system. This model grew out of her
many years of searching for answers to the question, "why, when we humans have
such a great capacity for caring, consciousness, and creativity, has our world
seen so much cruelty, insensitivity, and destruction?" She advocates for a
framework that goes far beyond what we've always understood to be true or
possible in terms of economics. Neo-classical economic theory is heavily
influenced by modern day capitalism's focus on the assessment and prediction of
how markets will succeed or fail. Eisler points out that this theory and its
corresponding models consistently ignore the latent economic potential of
human-centered, household activities of care.
The foundation of a "Caring Economics" goes beyond the constraining
categorizations of capitalist, socialist, or anarchist, offering instead a
broad spectrum framework that encourages us to identify what we value the most
in our lives and use that discovery as the lens through which we assess what is
most valuable in the world. Eisler puts forth a new economic map that includes
the household, unpaid community and natural sectors. She argues that by
including the contributions of caregiving - both for humans and the natural
environment - we can move towards a partnership and mutual respect
paradigm. By doing so, our economic system will better represent what each
member of society can contribute.
Using the example of childcare, Eisler highlights how our current economic
model engenders our unquestioning acceptance of the gap between paying an
electrician $70-$100/hour to fix our wiring and paying our childcare workers
and teachers significantly less. She argues that we do this because we're
raised to believe that the work of maintaining our built environment is
inherently more valuable than work related to caregiving. She goes on to
advocate for reframing our view of the household from a unit of consumption to
one of production. As Eisler writes, "this book is for everyone who wants ... to
build a new economic system that promotes creativity and generosity rather than
greed and destructiveness." This well-written collection of ideas and
strategies offers fresh thinking to address the current financial transition
and new ways to value contributions of caregivers around the world.
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