Upcoming Workshops
Our upcoming workshops are below with details and registration information. To view previous workshops, click here.
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What's Up with White Women?
Unpacking Sexism and White Privilege over Lunch
Our co-founder Ilsa Govan and Tilman Smith, co-authors of the book What's Up with White Women? are offering a lunch and learn series in May. They will explore four topics on our minds and hearts today as we think about the role of white women in promoting racial justice. Although centering on white women as our audience, all people are welcome to attend. You are invited to register for one, more, or all four. The book is not required to attend. We will be meeting virtually Fridays in May @12:30-1:30.
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MAY 3: It’s All Too Much: Overcoming White Racial Fatigue in the Era of Authoritarianism and Climate Change
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MAY 10: The Role of Goodness in Anti-Racism Practice
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MAY 24: Leading While White
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MAY 31: Navigating Ambiguity When Taking a Stand
Previous Workshops
Hiring & Retaining a Diverse Workforce
Becoming a multicultural organization involves more than just the number of diverse staff working within your company. It also requires creating work environments centered around equity and belonging. Getting there, in part, requires organizations shift from traditional hiring practices to more inclusive methodology throughout the entire hiring process. And it is not enough that we hire diverse individuals for their talents and qualifications, we must also find ways to keep them. This workshop focuses on looking at hiring practices through an equity lens in advertising, outreach, job announcements, the interview process, interview questions, and retention. Last Offered: November 2023
Equity Leaders Workshop: Leading Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Efforts
Now, more than ever, strong equity leaders are needed to guide organizations towards a truly anti-racist culture. Unfortunately, many of these positions are newly created, and those hired are coming in without any clear direction. Equity leaders often feel isolated and can quickly become frustrated or feel overwhelmed. In times of mass uprisings such as what we’re currently seeing in the Movement for Black Lives, everyone may expect you to have simple, quick answers and all the while you are processing your own emotions around the events. However, if we can come together to collaborate and learn from each other’s mistakes and successes, perhaps we can craft an easier path forward. As Paulo Freire said, “We make the road by walking.” This workshop provides an opportunity for equity leaders to share strategies for organizational change, problem solve some of the challenges they face, and to network. Facilitators Caprice Hollins & Ilsa Govan will share a model of multicultural organizational development and strategies for change we’ve identified over the past eleven years in our work with hundreds of organizations. We’d love for you to be part of this community. Our goal is for participants to come away with new tools for this important work as well as supportive partnerships they can lean on for many years to come. Won’t you join us? Last Offered: February 2024
Train the Trainer Strategies for Facilitating Courageous Conversations
Through engaging and interactive exercises, participants learn strategies and tips on how to successfully present sensitive information to a wide audience of learners. You will develop skills to take difficult conversations about race, privilege, and power to a deeper level and learn strategies for working with resistance. Both experienced and novice trainers will develop their facilitation skills and gain tools for leading conversations on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. For this training to be effective you must have some awareness of your own biases, privileges, and internalized oppression, as well as basic knowledge of institutional and structural racism in the United States. The more personal work you have done to understand these issues, the more you will get out of this workshop as a facilitator. The skills developed in this three-day intensive are valuable for individuals who want to further equity work in their communities. Organizations committed to instituting systemic change will benefit by sending a small group of employees who become internal trainers that can provide on-going professional development for staff. This virtual three-half day workshop will give you the opportunity to practice applying the strategies in a variety of scenarios. Attendees must purchase a copy of Hollins and Govan's book Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Strategies for Facilitating Conversations on Race (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015) and have it available to read and take notes during the training. This book is used instead of handouts. Last Offered: August 2023
Unpacking Sexism and White Privilege in Pursuit of Racial Justice
We are at a particular moment in the United States where white women have increasingly begun to understand the need for us to more effectively navigate multicultural partnerships. We’ve seen many news stories of how white women weaponize their privilege by calling the police on Black people for anything from trying to enter their own apartments, talking in pools, building patios on their own property, to telling them to leash their dogs. We’ve also witnessed white women’s racist anti-Asian rants caught on video. In the 2020 election, white women provided an even larger base of support for Donald Trump than in 2016 and actively participated in the January 2021 Insurrection at the Nation’s Capital Building. We have also shown up in large numbers at Black Lives Matter protests and worked to mobilize our white colleagues, friends, and families across the country to oppose racist violence. At the same time as we’re seeing heightened awareness of racism, we are experiencing a public reckoning with sexism as witnessed in the Women's March, #MeToo, and the upsurge in intersectional feminism. In all of these instances, white women have both hindered and helped to advance social justice. While white women face experiences of gender oppression, we also benefit from white privilege. In what ways do these two phenomena work together to create misunderstandings, missed collaborations, and acts of supremacy? What you'll learn. In this 2-day workshop, we use a developmental model to examine how our identities change as we grow in our understanding of personal and institutional oppression. We will use highly interactive methods including reflective writing, video clips, small group conversations, and storytelling to take a deeper look into our learned patterns of behavior. Recognizing these patterns with compassion rather than shame helps us name and practice strategies to better collaborate in multicultural settings. During our time together we will co-create a community where our spirits are renewed and our commitment to social justice is strengthened. Who may participate? We are two cisgender white women who offer a model that examines the harmful impact of white supremacy and patriarchy within a society that promotes a false gender binary. This space is intended for cis and trans women and non-binary folx who have internalized feminine gender norms. Any white women and gender non-conforming people who want to look at the ways we’ve navigated sexism and misogyny and internalized white superiority are welcome to attend. Multiracial women who present as or are perceived as white and want to interrogate internalized white superiority are also welcome. Last Offered: July 2023
Talking with Children & Youth about Race
Recent research has shown that children have very complex understandings of differences and stereotypes. Far from being color-blind, most children are aware of how their own skin color is an advantage or disadvantage. They also judge their peers based on stereotypes that adults might like to believe they are unaware of. Because of this, it is important to give youth anti-bias messages, through actions and words, to actively counter what they are witnessing in the world. In this two-day workshop, we will explore how young people in early childhood through their teen years are socialized to practice racism and privilege. The facilitators draw from their diverse experiences to engage parents, teachers, and concerned community members in this vital work for equity. Last Offered: May 2022
Liberating Ourselves from the Voices Within: A Writer's Workshop for People of Color
Have you ever heard yourself saying, “I should write a book”, but never got around to it? Or maybe someone else told you, “You should write a book about it”, but you never did. Are you bogged down with negative self-talk, keeping you from believing it’s possible? In this 3-day workshop, you will uncover how you are getting in your own way from doing one thing you’ve always wanted to do… write a book. Dr. Caprice D. Hollins will take you through a process that shifts your thinking from, “I don’t have time”, “I’m not qualified”, and “I don’t have the credentials”, to believing in the possibilities. She will help you move your thinking from, “Who am I to write a book?” to “Who am I not to?” Not only will you build community with other People of Color who share similar challenges, you will begin writing your first (but hopefully not your last) book. Together we will dig deep into the stories we’ve been telling ourselves and the stories others have told us about the worthiness of telling our own stories. We'll connect how much of what we’ve been told and believed, correlates to racism. We will confront these messages, so our stories turn into a book rather than a barrier. Dr. Hollins knows what it’s like to internalize oppressive voices, the ones that keep us from manifesting our true potential. She understands what’s it’s like to question and doubt her abilities. And she’s certainly familiar with the problem of being too busy to find the time. The only difference is, she’s fighting back. As result, she’s co-authored one book and in April will be working on the second edition of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Strategies for Facilitating Conversations on Race co-authored by her business partner, Ilsa Govan. And she has another book coming out in October! Who better to help you get unstuck than someone who has been there before, and in some ways, still is? Last Offered: May 2022