Lessons Learned from Katrina
by Terri Lee Freeman, President
Over the past week I have been riveted by the images of Katrina. Documentary after documentary, recounting what happened five years ago and what has happened since. The images of people in New Orleans who couldn’t evacuate, happily going into the shelter and protection of the Superdome; only for that happiness to turn to despair, desperation and grief in the days to follow.
Those haunting images immediately threw me back to the week of August 29, 2005 when, day after day, my guilt grew as I watched, from the comfort of my family room, my brothers and sisters, predominantly African- American and poor, struggle to survive, right here in America.
What we’ve learned after the fact, is that most American cities are ill- prepared for a large scale disaster, natural or man-made. We’ve learned that when government is absent, chaos ensues. We’ve learned that the media can be an incredible ally for those most in need and shine a bright light on injustice. We’ve learned that fear and desperation can on one hand make people do the unthinkable.
But we’ve also seen extreme tragedy bring out the very best in people. We’ve learned that the human spirit can be very resilient when provided the necessary supports. And, we’ve learned that race and class can still determine who gets what, when.
One of the documentaries I watched was hosted by NBC Nightly News anchorman Brian Williams, in which he proclaimed that “…Katrina should spur us to have a national dialogue about race, class and petroleum.” Hmmm, so what’s happened during these past five years. Well, some folks might say the issues regarding race in this country have been resolved. After all, we elected our first African-American President. As for class issues, the recession has added more people to the unemployment rolls. The foreclosure crisis has increased the numbers that are homeless. And the large number of uninsured Americans continues to broaden the gulf between the haves and the have nots. And as for oil or petroleum, can you say BP?
I couldn’t agree more with Brian Williams, and in fact, for the past six years, The Community Foundation has sponsored a dialogue series which examines the nexus between race and education called “Putting Race on the Table.” The series has focused on the academic achievement gap and provided a forum to talk about national and local solutions. But we know that the issues of race and class are not limited to education, but are insidious and can affect every aspect of society – health, housing, employment, criminal justice and economic development. While we can’t stimulate a national discussion, we are committed to continuing the discussion on a local and regional level. In spring 2011, we will host a series of “Putting Race on the Table” tours in which we will talk to and learn from communities around the region, and examine the various approaches residents, with the help of nonprofit organizations, have taken to deal with issues of race and class. These tours will culminate at a forum held in conjunction with an exhibit titled “RACE: Are We So Different?” organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
While we can’t prevent another natural disaster, we can limit the additional damage caused by racism, class-ism and ignorance. We can open the door to informed, civil discussion about issues that keep our communities divided. Over the coming months we will post more information about the “Putting Race On the Table” tours. Let us know what you think can be done, or what you are doing to increase understanding across racial, ethnic and class lines.
Holding Candidates Accountable to the Community—Mobilizing Students and Parents to Stay Civically Engaged
by Ben Murphy, Program Officer
Last week’s torrential rains and flooding didn’t keep more than 250 DC students, parents, teachers, and concerned residents away from the Charles Sumner School auditorium. Reflecting the deep passion and concern in the community around education, five local nonprofits (DC Voice, Youth Education Alliance, EMPOWER DC, STEP Up DC, and the DC Language Access Coalition), collectively known as Communities for Education Organizing (CEO), attracted a standing-room-only crowd to hear firsthand from candidates running for election in the DC Mayoral, City Council Chair, and City Council At-Large races.
Parents, students, teachers, principals—these are the voices that the candidates heard from at the forum—voices that are all too often drowned out in the contentious dialogue on education in the District.
The students’ voices were perhaps the most compelling of the evening—I applaud them for the courage it took to stand up in front of so many adults and speak from their own experience in schools. The students spoke passionately about the issues they face in finding adequate guidance counselor support, access to teachers and resources who are bilingual, and how to respect students’ perspective in the process of school reform.
The CEO member organizations nonprofits are striving to ensure that the people affected by school reform are those who are empowered to make decisions that impact education. Their goal is to double the number of students who graduate from high school and successfully transition to college graduation.
These CEO nonprofits aren’t just pulling together candidates forums—collectively, with funding from The Community Foundation and a coalition of eight local funders, they have won an impressive slate of victories in the three short years that they have been working together. Among the most impressive are:
- Securing $4.5 million in increased support for students who are not proficient in English.
- Winning legislation that mandates that DCPS high schools maintain a student-to- guidance counselor ratio of no less than 1:250, where previously the ratio had been as high as 1:500!
- Securing $1 million in additional funding for guidance counselor professional development in 2010.
- Securing time in front of the City Council for a budget oversight hearing crafted, and moderated, by students and parents.
In a nod to CEO’s theme of empowering the community, the forum came to a close with a call for the candidates to raise their hand in a pledge to keep their doors open and meet regularly with students and parents on education issues, should they be elected. Every candidate raised his or her hand.
The Community Foundation and its funding partners have raised and granted more than $2.4 million over three years in the CEO initiative, underscoring our commitment to young people and education in our region. Funders, corporations, business, parents—anyone who wants to see the District’s young people succeed in school—can join the effort spearheaded by Communities for Education Organizing! To learn how you can help support this critical work, contact me at (202) 263-4765 or bmurphy@cfncr.org.
Strengthening the DC Summer Youth Employment Program, and Paving the Way for Tomorrow’s Workforce
By Sarah Oldmixon
Director, Workforce Initiatives
The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region
This past Sunday’s Washington Post featured a thoughtful commentary by Martha Ross, Deputy Director of Greater Washington Research at the Brookings Institution, a Community Foundation grantee. Responding to continued budget overruns and concerns about quality at the DC Summer Youth Employment Program, Ross outlined five concrete strategies to strengthen the program and better serve local youth:
- Focus on quality over quantity.
- Ensure that every participant has a confirmed job site and high-quality job opportunity.
- Match youth to their job sites based on an assessment of their hard and soft skills.
- Establish clear standards for youth and job sites, and that both receive orientation, support and oversight throughout the summer.
- Make certain that managerial and financial systems are sufficient to handle registration, job site assignment, timekeeping, payroll and troubleshooting.
Ross has focused extensively on youth workforce development issues for the past year, thanks in large part to a grant from an anonymous donor at The Community Foundation. With our support, Greater Washington Research at Brookings and its research partners – the DC Alliance of Youth Advocates and the Center for Law and Social Policy – are currently working on a detailed analysis of year-round workforce programs for youth and young adults. Their analysis will be published in fall 2010.
Improving the quality and capacity of local workforce development programs is a priority for The Community Foundation and we’ve worked hard to develop new resources to support this work. Since 2007, investments made by the Community Foundation-led Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative (GWWDC), as well as our individual and corporate donors, have helped to leverage significant new resources for workforce development in our region, including:
- $1.2 million in local philanthropic support for GWWDC’s workforce development efforts;
- $450,000 in matching funds from the National Fund for Workforce Solutions; and
- $10.2 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“stimulus package”) funds secured by Community Foundation grantees and other local organizations with our assistance.
That’s nearly $30 in leveraged funds for every $1 invested by The Community Foundation and our donors!
Learn more about how you can support high-quality workforce development programs and policy initiatives in Metropolitan Washington by contacting Sarah Oldmixon, Director of Workforce Initiatives, at (202) 973-2519 or soldmixon@cfncr.org.
WAMU Radio: The Community Foundation’s Support for Mental Health Services in a Troubled Economy
- Author: Terri Lee Freeman
The stress of daily life can take its toll on all of us. But for people in our region who have lost their jobs, are facing foreclosure or can’t afford to pay for prescriptions, life can be truly overwhelming – even life-threatening.
Yesterday I sat down with WAMU Radio for a story about the mental and emotional impact of the economy on those who are financially disadvantaged.
You can listen to the story now on WAMU’s website.
We can’t overlook the psychological impact of losing one’s livelihood, home or health insurance, not to mention the emotional toll of the economic crisis on those who didn’t have homes or jobs to begin with.
With that in mind, The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region recently awarded grants through our Neighbors in Need Fund in support of mental health programs throughout the region.
Since the recession began, more people, including the “new poor,” have been showing up at community health clinics, many without health insurance and many in need of mental health services. Nonprofits have been reporting alarming trends, such as an increase in substance abuse, domestic violence and the number of calls to local suicide hotlines.
Community Foundation grants have helped organizations serve uninsured residents, provide culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health services, extend clinic hours and restore staff positions that had been cut.
There’s a saying, says Satira Streeter, the only licensed clinical psychologist in Ward 8. “When rich people catch a cold, poor folk catch pneumonia. Well, we’re definitely seeing pneumonia.” Yet, Dr. Streeter adds, “By recognizing that good mental health care is a necessity and not an option, The Community Foundation is truly helping our neighbors in need rebuild their lives and their families.”
Please, help The Community Foundation continue to invest in mental health and other critical safety net services in our region, and donate to the Neighbors in Need Fund.
Diversity – A Path on the Road to Racial Equity.
By: Bomani Johnson
Director, DC Office
The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region
Diversity, in and of itself, does not mean racial equity.
This is the thought that kept coming to my mind as I listened to the stories of our moderator and my fellow panelists at a convening this week on the topic of Rising through the Ranks: Race and Gender in Nonprofit Leadership. Organized by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and the Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington, the panel was comprised of a very diverse (based on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) group of four nonprofit professionals and was moderated by an African American woman. We spoke to a group of approximately 75 nonprofit professionals from the DC area. To open the panel, we were each asked to share stories about our background and how the concept of diversity has influenced our lives. I had the privilege of speaking last.
When it was my turn to speak, I gave a cursory glance of my background – born and raised in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago; I mentioned how the seemingly endless list of after school, weekend and summer activities that my parents often forced me to participate in as a kid, hammered home the understanding that the world was a myriad of peoples, places and cultures. I talked about how learning to “code switch” at a very early age helped me to navigate through college and a number of other experiences as a young man. And I talked about the challenges I experience as an African American man working in philanthropy in the DC area.
I shared that I am honored to work at one of the most diverse foundations in the area. An organization that has an African American woman as its president; two of its past three board chairs are women of color; has looked at and begun addressing the lack of women and people of color on its board of trustees; has intentionally supported the work of area nonprofits that address social justice issues; and raises awareness of the existence and impact of discrimination based on race, gender and/or class in our region. I also shared that despite all of the growth we have made internally, and the impacts we have contributed to externally, The Community Foundation has not been able to significantly “move the needle” towards equality of opportunity and access to resources and power for marginalized populations in the greater DC area. Racial equity means just that – when society’s systems and markets perform equally well for all racial and ethnic groups.
I shared that the last statement was not meant to slight the growth and development of The Community Foundation as a safe and open workplace for people from all backgrounds; nor to negate the positive outcomes we have contributed to in the lives of thousands of individuals and families throughout the greater DC area in the more than 35 years of our existence. Our experience as one of the most diverse foundations in the area provides another example of the thought that kept coming to my mind – diversity does not mean racial equity. Diversity is a critical element, a necessary tool, in building racial equity.
With that in mind, I am proud to say that The Community Foundation will continue to build on its history of raising awareness of the impacts of race, class and gender in our region. The next iteration of work on the subject will focus on sharing and learning from the very folks who make it possible for The Community Foundation to do its work, our donors.
Beginning in the fall of 2010, we will organize a series of neighborhood tours throughout Greater Washington offering donors an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of race across a broad spectrum of issue areas (i.e., health, education, workforce, environment, etc.). Groups of The Community Foundation’s donors will be guided through specific neighborhoods by its residents, nonprofit leaders and other stakeholders to learn about the successful strategies nonprofits and community partners are utilizing to create racial equity and access to opportunity. Donor participants will not only learn about the issues, but will take with them an invaluable experience that will inform their giving. In doing so, The Community Foundation will stay true to our mission – “to strengthen the Washington metropolitan region by encouraging and supporting effective giving and by providing leadership on critical issues,” and use our diversity to help move our society along the path toward racial equity.
See the following links for additional information:
Diversity is the Wrong Word
Race and Gender in Non-Profit Leadership
