Diversity Archives - Wayside Youth & Family Support Network

One Anti-Racist Action You Can Take Today: Understand Intersectional Feminism

Wayside Team — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 10:52:31 +0000

Daniela Thermora
Career Development Manager

When someone doesn’t know what intersectionality is, the way I can best describe it is by comparing my core self to a long, main street. The street can be narrow in places and turn sharply in others. It can gently slope or become a steep incline. The main road can also cross with avenues, boulevards, terraces and even a few cul-de-sacs. There are sections of the road that may be less traveled, or with fewer distinctions, but each is an aspect of the main route.

All the intersections along the main road are what makes me, me. Without them, I am not me.

When the concept of intersectionality was introduced to me, I thought, “This definition is literally what I’ve been looking for all my life to explain why I am who I am.” By understanding ourselves and being able to explain to others how all the different parts of ourselves show up in our daily lives in our interactions with others, at work, at the supermarket, and even in our neighborhood, makes us have a better understanding of humanity.

I show up in my life to the outside world as a woman; I express my femininity with my hairstyle, my clothes and even with the makeup that I wear a few times a week. The world experiences me as brown, Latina and short. Some people may experience me as curvy, others as overweight. Some see me with my children, and know I am a mother of girls, without knowing the journey I had to take to have them. The bottom line is that this is just how the world sees me, but I come to the world with many more dimensions and lenses than just woman, brown, short, curvy, overweight, mother. I experience the world with many more intersections, parts of myself that people don’t see; my education, my social economic status, my citizenship, my trauma, my mental health, my stressors, my family history, where I’ve lived, my culture, my languages, my genetics, etc. That’s what intersectionality is to me – the things people see and the things they don’t.

What would happen if we were more willing to understand that people show up in the world as their whole selves, not just the work self, for instance? What would happen if we were to understand that all of the different parts of a person’s identity influence the way they exchange ideas and socialize? What if we examined how certain aspects of identity – race, class, sex, economic status, education – color the way people are perceived in the world?How can we show them humility and understanding when we disagree or want more from them?

By taking the journey and understanding all the intersections of our identity, we don’t have to pick just one part of the road, we can show up in the world with our entire, whole selves.

Resources:

Time: Kimberlé Crenshaw on What Intersectionality Means Today
UNWomen.org: Intersectional Feminism: What It Means and Why It Matters Right Now

TheConversation.com: What Is Intersectionality? All of Who I Am
The Opportunity Agenda: Ten Tips for Putting Intersectionality Into Practice

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One Anti-Racist Action You Can Take Today: Follow the Work of Chief Diversity Officers

Wayside Team — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 01:17:55 +0000

By Guimel DeCarvalho

Vice President of People & Culture and Chief Diversity Officer

After the murder of George Floyd companies issued statements of outrage and committed themselves to improving their corporate culture. They also raced to hire a Chief Diversity Officers (CDO) to guide them in just how to do it without making costly mistakes. As the title implies, CDO’s are responsible for developing and implementing the diversity, equity, & inclusion strategy of an organization. They oversee initiatives, employee relations and tie business outcomes to the diversity, equity and inclusion work of the organization. They can create real organizational culture change with the proper budget, reporting structure and support. As CDO’s value has risen across industries, it’s important to pay attention to more than just their titles. Follow the work they are doing in cities like Boston which hired Dr. Kathryn Crockett, a published author and MIT lecturer of Public Policy and Urban Planning as its Chief of Equity. Boston Mayor Walsh established a cabinet-level position “to embed equity and racial justice into all City planning, operations, and work moving forward.”

Under Dr. Crockett’s leadership, the Office of Equity will be charged with leading the Administration’s efforts across departments to embed equity into all city work, and actively work to dismantle racism by putting an intentional focus on supporting communities of color and marginalized groups across all departments, and building equitable governmental structures to sustain this work.

Read about what strategies CDO’s have tried and tested. Below are links explaining the importance of CDO’s and a few to watch for.

Harvard Business Review: Do you know why your company needs a Chief Diversity Officer?

Medium: What is a Chief Diversity Officer and Why Does Your Company Need One?

City of Boston: Dr. Karilyn Crockett

CNBC: NBA appoints Oris Stuart as chief people and inclusion officer

Workday: Carin Taylor bio

FairPlayTalks: 2020’s Top 50 Chief Diversity Officers

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MetroWest Health Foundation Awards $720,000 in Grants to Address COVID & Health Equity Needs

Wayside Team — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 07:10:12 +0000

This article originally appeared in the Framingham Source on Nov. 9, 2020

FRAMINGHAM – The MetroWest Health Foundation announced the award of over $720,000 in new grants to area organizations. The bulk of the funds will address immediate needs in response to COVID 19 by providing capacity building support to local public health departments, support to area councils on aging to address the social isolation of older adults, and funding to address the emotional resiliency of residents coping with the anxiety, stress and loss associated with the pandemic.

In addition to COVID-related funding, the foundation provided support to local organizations seeking to address health inequities in the region. This includes a grant to Wayside Youth & Family Support Network to be used to develop a regional resource center focused on health equity. The new center will develop tools, training modules and expert speakers that can be used by other organizations as they seek to address diversity, equity, and inclusion in their workforce, governance, and programming.

Organizations receiving grants under the foundation’s fall grant cycle are:

COVID 19 Grants to Enhance Public Health Capacity –

Framingham Health Department $30,000
Hopkinton Health Department $19,800
Hudson Health Department $20,000
Natick Health Department $30,000
Needham Public Health Division $20,000
Sudbury Board of Health $20,000

COVID 19 Grants to Address the Social Isolation of Older Adults –

Ashland Council on Aging $24,000
Friends of the Callahan Senior Center $25,000
Holliston Council on Aging $16,650
Massachusetts Assoc. for the Blind $21,347
Needham Community Council $25,000
Northborough Council on Aging $ 9,268
Sherborn Council on Aging $16,000
Thrive, Support & Advocacy $17,160

COVID 19 Emotional Resiliency Grants –

Advocates, Inc. $29,962
Boys & Girls Clubs of MetroWest $30,000
Hudson Health Department $30,000
New Hope, Inc. $30,000
SMOC $25,782
Spark Kindness $24,574
Westborough Youth & Family Services $19,000

Health Equity Grants –

Health Care for All $30,000
Learning Center for the Deaf $30,000
Natick Health Department $30,000
Wayside Youth & Family Support Net. $29,769

Other Support –

A Place to Turn $20,000
Natick Service Council $20,000
Town of Natick Rail Trail $75,000

The MetroWest Health Foundation is a catalyst for a healthy MetroWest, providing more than $5 million in annual financial support for preventative and responsive health programs. Through its work on issues such as adolescent health, healthy aging and health equity, the foundation seeks to develop and support programs that have a positive impact on the health of the 25 communities in the MetroWest area of Massachusetts. For more information about the foundation, visit www.mwhealth.org.

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16 Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Books Our Staff Love

Wayside Team — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 23:14:26 +0000

Wayside’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee is constantly exploring new ways to fulfill our agency’s mission of being anti-racist and inclusive. It’s a constant learning process as we work to promote our DEI principles and engage 500-employees across 19 sites. Our committee shared some of their top book picks that inform their work to understand one another, acknowledge hidden biases and challenge racist systems and behaviors.

Staff Recommendations:

Taiany Goulart, site manager, Wayside Medford

How to Be an Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X Kendi

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Carlton, Wayside DEI consultant

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Jodie Nierintz, senior program director, Wayside Milford

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Fredrick Mann, Wayside clinician

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, and So Much More by Janet Mock. “Mock’s Story of growing up in California and Hawaii as a low-income trans girl of color.”

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. “Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health.”

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. “This book looks at the ways we do harm by failing to understand one another, a problem Gladwell investigates through the child-abuse scandal involving Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the deceptions of financier Bernie Madoff and the TV, and more.”

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald. “This book explores hidden biases that we all carry from a lifetime of experiences with blind spot cover social groups – age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, or nationality.”

Other recommendations:

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in The Cafeteria by Beverly Tatum

On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case For Hope by DeRay Mckesson

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