FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


DATE OF RELEASE: November 14, 2014
MEDIA CONTACT: Ray E. Corpuz, Jr.
CONTACT TITLE: City Manager
CONTACT TELEPHONE NUMBER: (831) 758-7204
CONTACT EMAIL: [email protected]



City of Salinas, East Salinas BHC and The California Endowment To Collaborate on Ensuring Fair and Inclusive Government

 

Salinas, CA -- The City of Salinas and East Salinas Building Healthy Communities (ESBHC) plan to train and work together with the goal of ensuring that government practices are fair and inclusive.

 

The first step will be a shared five-day training called Governing for Racial Equity, or GRE, beginning Monday, November 17. The training and six months of follow-up work is supported by The California Endowment, which also provides funding for East Salinas, one of 14 Building Healthy Communities working to realize health and educational equity across the state.

 

GRE begins with the recognition that while discrimination has been banned, it can nevertheless persist, sometimes going unrecognized. Implicit bias may be built into the way a process works. GRE participants learn from each other's experiences, sometimes sharing thoughts and feelings that may not seem safe in other settings, and then work together to make improvements where needed through a shared set of understandings and core values.

 

"We're the first city in the state and among few across the nation to commit to taking on this training across the organization," said Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter. "We believe this work will come to be seen as fundamental to succeeding as a multi-cultural community: making sure everyone is included, and that we gain the benefits that come when everyone contributes."

 

The GRE training will be led by consultants Rinku Sen and Jerry Tello. Sen is president and executive director of Race Forward, a national organization founded in 1981 that conducts research, consulting and advocacy on race and society, and which publishes the Colorlines news website.

 

Tello is the founding director of the National Compadres Network, which provides culturally-rooted counseling and leadership training for Latino males and their families and communities. (See more on race Forward and National Compadres Network below.)

 

On Monday and Tuesday, November 17-18, the course will begin with two days of training for 46 people from ESBHC community of partners, grantees and other key stakeholders. An evening session is scheduled for County of Monterey leadership on Wednesday, November 19.

Forty-six City of Salinas department heads and staff will participate in a two-day session on November 19 -20.

 

On Friday, November 21, the City and ESBHC groups will come together to agree on a set of achievable, measureable commitments to racial equity, which will be acted on during the following six months.

"'This week has the potential to open up a real conversation between the community and the officials who make decisions that impact their lives," said Carmen Gil, ESBHC manager and co-chair of the local GRE workgroup. "We hope to build genuine relationships that can lead our community towards transformation."

 

About Race Forward

 

"Race Forward advances racial justice through research, media and practice. Founded in 1981, Race Forward brings a systemic analysis and approach to complex race issues to help people take effective action toward racial equity. Race Forward's mission is to build awareness, solutions and leadership for racial justice by building the leadership capacity for people of all races across systems and institutions to develop a practice that advances policies and allocation of resources that achieve health and racial equity.

 

"Race Forward's research recognizes the impact that individual acts of racism have on people of color. Our primary focus is to contextualize them within a deeper, structural analysis of racial injustice. We believe that a true understanding of racial justice issues requires an explicit examination of race and ethnicity and our research agenda is developed around understanding how race compounds and intersects with other societal issues, and refer to this intersectional approach as "race and...".  In addition to developing original research and data on race issues, we also highlight ways to nurture and strengthen social change. Rinku Sen, executive director of Race Forward, will be the co-lead trainer for the entire week of the Governing for Racial Equity training and launch, in partnership with the National Compadres Network."

 

More at raceforward.org.

 

About the National Compadres Network

 

"The National Compadres Network is a national effort whose focus is on the reclaiming and reinforcement of culturally rooted, healing-informed practice for Latino males in their lives and for their families, communities, and society. For over 25 years NCN has focused its efforts on developing culturally rooted healing-informed capacity, and developing and building leadership of Latino boys and men based on the development of "circulos" (extended kinship networks).

"NCN engages in policy, advocacy and training to assist national and community organizations in developing and implementing programs that resonate with Latino families and communities. NCN has been a long-standing ESBHC Partner since 2010, providing critically needed capacities to support realizing BHC's theory of change, to realize health equity through building up the leadership capacity of residents and neighborhoods, as well as systems to build a healing-informed practice to realize health and racial equity in schools juvenile justice, criminal justice, and neighborhoods. 

 

"Through the leadership of NCN, a tri-county La Cultural Cura Network (Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Benito) has emerged, made up of over 100 members from the region working as direct service providers and line staff, program directors or within mid-level management positions from the fields of public health, juvenile justice/probation, alternative education, mental/behavioral health, non-profit, higher education, schools, social services, city agencies and community organizing/advocacy. Jerry Tello, founding director of the National Compadres Network, will be the co-lead trainer for the entire week of the Governing for Racial Equity training and launch in partnership with Rinku Sen and Race Forward."

More at nationalcompadresnetwork.com.

 

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