Power of Place Digital Learning Series 2021
Power of Place 2021 Digital Learning Series
The Power of Place series focused on structural racism in the systems that touch opportunity youth (OY) and the interventions that best support youth and young adults to achieve their goals, including programs and systems that advance meaning-making, foster belonging, purpose and well-being, and deepen healing practices. The agenda for the series is grounded in Arnold Chandler’s life course and structural racism frameworks, and his emerging research promoting meaning-making interventions as a method to undo structural racism. Chandler is a long time partner in the work of the Opportunity Youth Forum, and his work underlies the year’s worth of learning events in this series, which underlie a new body of work in OYF to create pathways and systems serving OY that value and support BIPOC youth identity, success and well-being. This learning series builds on two key concepts:
- Structural Racism: A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity.
- Meaning-Making Interventions: unlike those focused on improving “skills,” meaning-making interventions are focused on improving the identity-related meaning that youth and children apply to both themselves and the challenging contexts in which they strive to succeed (like schools).
The Power of Place videos explore these concepts in the context of the key systems that touch opportunity youth, including: K12 re-engagement, postsecondary, and workforce, as well as the other related ‘service’ systems (housing, health, justice, and more) that impact the lives of young adults. The series does this with a place-based lens, while lifting up strategies, practices, and tools from across the Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) network and partners. This learning series seeks to:
- Frame the tackling of structural racism and related barriers as a foundational strategy that communities are using to improve outcomes for OY;
- Explore in an intentional way the role of the systems that touch the lives of OY – secondary, postsecondary, workforce – along with other intersecting systems including juvenile justice, social and mental health services, etc.;
- Hold a focus on specific individual systems while asking communities to hold an ecosystem frame, even as they think about unique strategies to improve specific systems;
- Look at program-level outcomes in tandem with system change efforts;
- Understand the historical policies that lead to the inequities that young people face, grounded in data, narrative, and centering the voices of youth.
Structural Racism, Place and Life Course Outcomes: A Concrete Primer
Link to Resources: Dropbox
Watch The Video Archive: Only Available for Registrants
Summary: This session will present a coherent framework for understanding structural racism using the Life Course Framework as a foundation. It will describe what makes racism “structural” and the core mechanisms by which structural racism leads to unfair disparities in life outcomes within and across generations. It will also explain how “place” became the linchpin of structural racism through the deliberate construction of racially segregated neighborhoods by policymakers and private actors. Lastly, it will offer a case study from Los Angeles county that illustrates how structural racism produces stark disparities in life outcomes along racial lines.
Speaker: Arnold Chandler, President, Forward Change Consulting
Plenary: The Buffalo Story
Watch The Video Archive: YouTube
Summary: Advancing a community-wide commitment to structural racism requires buy-in from a range of community-based actors, including leaders from the private sector, education, and philanthropy. The Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo launched the Racial Equity Roundtable, a coalition of more than 30 community leaders from public, private, nonprofits and faith institutions aimed at advancing racial equity and promoting the change required to accelerate shared regional prosperity. This plenary panel will tell the story of how the Community Foundation identified structural racism as a community priority and built public will and buy-in across sectors and systems to center a commitment to addressing structural racism in community improvement efforts, including expanding employment opportunities for opportunity youth. This plenary panel will feature a range of community leader perspectives – including youth voice – aimed at improving outcomes for vulnerable youth and young adults in Buffalo.
Opening Remarks:
Dr. Gail Christopher, Former Vice President, WK Kellogg Foundation
Plenary Speakers:
Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, President & CEO, Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo
Felicia Beard, Senior Director, Racial Equity Initiatives, Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo
Tim Hogues, Commissioner for Personnel for Erie County, NY
Malik Stubbs, Youth Leader, Breaking Barriers
Monique Miles, Aspen Forum for Community Solutions (moderator)
Greater Buffalo Racial Equity Roundtable: Creating Conditions for Systems Change
Watch The Video Archive: YouTube Video
Summary: In Buffalo, Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo launched the Greater Buffalo Racial Equity Roundtable, a coalition of more than 30 community leaders from public, private, nonprofits and faith institutions convened to advance racial equity and promote the change required to accelerate a shared regional prosperity. This session, building on the earlier panel discussion, provided a deeper dive into the story of this effort and its agenda for creating conditions that support systems change. This conversation with Buffalo community leaders and partners covered a range of themes, including how a commitment to addressing structural racism was identified as a core objective in the community, the structure of the Racial Equity Roundtable and key partners (more than 300!), learnings, progress to-date, and vision for the evolution of the work.
Speakers: Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo
Felicia Beard, Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo
Tim Hogues, Erie County, NY
Malik Stubbs, Breaking Barriers
Pursuing Equity in Data Use
Watch The Video Archive: YouTube Video
Summary: Using data to improve outcomes for opportunity youth means understanding all opportunity youth. Applying an equity lens to your data strategy is essential to understanding all the sub-groups of opportunity youth, and to designing effective strategies to address their unique needs. However, pursuing equity in your data strategy can be challenging because of the biases built into existing data systems and how they are connected, thus, interpretation, target setting, and planning must be done with explicit attention to potential bias. In this workshop, participants were guided through the steps to take and questions to ask to reduce bias and to advance their data strategy through an equity lens.
Speakers: Kayla Brooks, Standpoint Consulting
Dr. Adriane Johnson-Williams, Standpoint Consulting
Collective Impact: Centering Equity (concurrent session)
Watch The Video Archive: YouTube Video
Summary: In order to truly solve complex social issues, structural inequality along race, class and culture lines needs to be tackled head-on. For this reason, the systems focus of collective impact work provides a significant opportunity to advance equity in communities. This session seeks to help organizations think through how to promote equity and inclusion through their collective impact work. Learn about the key building blocks for equity-focused work and hear how other practitioners have built an equity and inclusion lens into their efforts. Participants also had a chance to engage with peers to discuss practical ways to infuse equity into their own efforts.
Speaker: Junious Williams, Junious Williams Consulting, Inc.
Session 2: Addressing Structural Racism in the Secondary Education and Reengagement System – June 30th, 2021
Watch The Video Archive
: YouTube Summary: This session focused on the impacts of structural racism in the context of the secondary education and re-engagement systems and highlighted solutions and interventions that communities and reengagement practitioners are implementing in response to the disproportionate impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on educational outcomes of opportunity youth, particularly students of color, as well as long-term system change efforts to address inequities these systems. Goals for the session included:
- Highlight impacts of structural racism in the context of the secondary education and re-engagement system, as well as interventions aligned with Arnold Chandler’s framework
- Highlight the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on secondary education and reengagement systems
- Highlight strategies that communities are implementing in the immediate response to Covid-19, as well as long-term system change efforts to address inequities and improve outcomes for opportunity youth
Specific interventions discussed in this session included:
- Pathways Interventions: YouthBuild. Robert Clark, Executive Director ofYouthBuild Newarkand Scott Emerick, Executive Director ofYouthBuild Philadelphia Charter Schooldiscussed the YouthBuild model and approach to youth leadership development, community service, and civic engagement. The conversation lifted up how these two leaders have committed to an organizational focus on race, identity, and community activism, while building meaning-making practices to support participants in developing a sense of belonging and purpose.
- In-School Interventions: Alayna Shaw, Senior AmeriCorps Project Manager and Mary Zanotti, Executive Director ofColorado Youth For a Change, discussed ways in which the organization is addressing racial equity within their re-engagement programs and internally. The conversation explored addressing white saviorism, white cultural norms vs. transformational cultural norms and the school to prison pipeline. Additionally, CYC discussed the ways in which the organization plans to move forward in its racial equity work (i.e. student voice, anti-oppression framework, and recruiting staff that reflects the identities of the students they serve).
- Pathways Interventions: The Maya Angelou Schools. Katia Jones, Director of Postsecondary Transitions, and Kamal Wright-Cunningham, Managing Director ofMaya Angelou Schools & See Forever Foundationfocused on integration of SEL-programming and post-secondary preparation to best prepare opportunity youth who have experienced a myriad of complex traumas. These leaders discussed how these strategies are implemented across their network of schools which include an alternative high school, young adult GED and vocational program and secure detention facility. Additionally, the team shared how they have enhanced their holistic approach to supporting the scholar, family, and community in light of the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Youth-Led Systems Change Interventions: South King County Latinx Reengagement Project. Maria Guizar and Maria Gonzalez of theKing County, Department of Community and Human Servicesand Max Meshnick fromCommunity Center for Education Results shared theLatinx Youth Reengagement Project Report, which presented qualitative analysis from interviews with Latinx young people (ages 16-24) who have left both traditional high school and the re-engagement system, and recommendations on what “we” could do better to help them stay engaged in school, gain a secondary credential and go to college. Quantitative data for the Latinx project was used to formulate desired outcomes and explain how improvements were made to close the disproportionality gap. These leaders discussed how centering student/youth voice was key to the project, as well as lessons learned from Latinx Project awardees regarding implementation successes and challenges.