Transitions
As The New Year Arrives
- Community Schools - With every passing year, we learn more about what we can accomplish by using the Community School Strategy as a way to organize our community to support the success of students, their families and the communities they live in.
One thing we are very excited about right now is that we have the Early Warning and Response System up and running in 9 schools and more than 10 community partner organizations. This tool makes it possible for educators and service providers to track and, when needed, respond to the needs of 5200 local intermediate and middle school students, so they stay on track toward graduation.
What we could use your help with… The evidence is clear - students who have a caring adult in their life do better than those that don’t. We need you to step up to serve as the “second shift” of caring adults for local children. View all of the opportunities we have listed on our volunteer center website here.
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - We’ve prioritized learning how to use a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion lens in all of our work. As part of this effort, almost half of our staff have attended local Racial Equity trainings and the rest will attend in 2019. We have also incorporated additional trainings into our annual staff meeting calendar, joined the WNC Diversity Engagement Coalition and have begun using the Global Diversity and Inclusion Benchmarks assessment tool to evaluate all of our policies and practices. We will continue to address these findings in the year(s) to come.
What we need from you… We know there is no “end point” in this work. Anyone who is committed to this work, be they an individual, or an institution made up of individuals, knows that there is always room to improve, always work to be done to peel back the invisible layers of privilege and institutional racism. So, to that end, we invite you to help us see our public facing blind spots and if you haven’t already done so, we invite you to take this journey yourself - joining a session of the Racial Equity Institute Training or Building Bridges as a start.
- Help us spread the word about finding a great new leader for this organization. Here’s the job description and I ask that each of you take it and spread it far and wide.
- And if you haven’t made your gift for 2018, it isn’t too late. Follow this link to give today or give Lisa a call at 828 255-0696 and she can process your gift over the phone.
A Final Thought
