Coming Together for Racial Understanding

What is Coming Together for Racial Understanding:

Unique Value Statement: Coming Together for Racial Understanding is a dialogue-to-change process for communities seeking new pathways for working together across racial/ethnic lines that seeks to foster understanding and build trust in order to take informed collective action for meaningful change, unlike required DEI training alone which seldom seeks to develop trusting relationships among participants.


• Coming Together for Racial Understanding Overview
  
  
• Coming Together for Racial Understanding 2021 Impact Video

     

Who is involved:

State list

Working through Cooperative Extension Service, state training teams are building capacity within Extension to host community dialogues.

 

2018 face-to-face





2019 face-to-face

 

2021 virtual





2022 face-to-face

What has been the impact so far?

• 2021 Impact Video
   
• August 2020 Training Report
   
• October 2019 Training Report 
 
• August 2018 Training Report
  

Related Research

We (All) Need to Talk About Race: Building Extension's Capacity for Dialogue and Action

Background

In late 2016, the Extension Committee on Operations and Policy (ECOP) charged a small team of Cooperative Extension Service (CES) and non-Land Grant University professionals (referred to as a Rapid Response Team) to examine the current capacity of CES to respond to the need for dialogue to promote racial understanding and healing, and to provide recommendations to build CES capacity in this area. Following the April 2017 report to ECOP, the Rapid Response Team explored training options for civil dialogue on race relations to meet the need to expand capacity. Recently, a team of 23 professionals both within and outside the Land Grant University system have identified, organized, and refined a training process designed to prepare teams in participating states to serve as trainers within their own states.

The first step in building capacity for this work within CES will be to host a train-the-trainer event in which teams of 3 individuals from among the nation’s LGU Cooperative Extension Services will be invited to participate in a five-day intensive training workshop. The workshop will prepare these participants to return home to their own states and prepare a larger cadre of CES personnel to lead dialogues. Then this larger state CES team will begin working within the communities they serve to facilitate dialogues on race relations at the local level. The result will be a stronger capacity within CES to assist with difficult conversations around race. This capacity will also assist with other challenging topics that might arise in their day-to-day duties. Communities will benefit by having a well-trusted entity embedded within their communities to help navigate these challenging waters. Also, each community will follow up the conversations by developing a plan for doable actions that can help improve the racial climate within their respective places.

To Learn More About the ECOP Rapid Response Team

Sponsors

Extension Committee on Operations & Policy (ECOP)