Workshop Intensive: Building Capacity of White Leaders Working for Racial Equity

White leaders committed to social justice, don't always have a full understanding of how their own racialized experiences are impacting their work and relationships. As they uncover pieces of their whiteness, sometimes they find ugliness that they'd rather not see. This series will help them better understand the stories and messages they receive, internalize, and enact. Through critical reflection, with compassion for themselves and one another, they can begin to heal themselves so that they can be whole in the fight for racial justice.

Over three sessions the workshop will utilize dialogue, critical self reflection, mindfulness, and creativity to

• Build support between white peers committed to racial equity
• Identify the ways whiteness creates isolation, disconnection and harm in our lives
• Engage in dialogue to build capacity for connection, constructive conflict, and healing
• Develop a healthy and self aware approach to long term racial justice work

Participants are required to attend all sessions*

November 1st 8:30am-12pm: Mapping racial identity

November 8th 8:30am-12pm: Whiteness in relationships

November 22nd 8:30am-12pm Healing and action

Cedarworks
4919 Pentridge Street
Philadelphia, PA 19143

*If you are not sure if this workshop is for you, they would love to hear your questions and concerns.

Limited scholarships available. Please contact event organizers if cost is a barrier. If your organization is paying for you to attend, please use the organizational rate.

The facilitators:

Hillary Blecker helps groups accomplish their goals by building authentic relationships across barriers of race, class, gender, and other social identities. She’s a longtime leader of both dialogues and trainings, a leadership coach, and a co-founder of The Blue Door Group and its predecessor, the Philadelphia Trainers’ Collaborative. Hillary has a decade of experience in occupational health and safety training, predominantly with immigrant and low-wage workers, where she learned that relationships and trust were the biggest internal obstacles to groups getting what they want. Now she leads dialogues that support organizations and individuals to address existing conflicts, locate barriers to engagement, and build trust together. She has a BA in Public Health Social Sciences from Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Public Health in Community Practice from the University of Washington, and a graduate certificate in Diversity Leadership from Temple University. She is a certified professional coach through Leadership that Works. As a trainer, Hillary prioritizes connection, warmth, and flexibility in assisting groups to have productive conflict and get where they need to go.

Julia Terry (ACG '08) is a visual artist, educator, and facilitator. She is passionate about the power of art for trauma-informed, anti-racist education, and parenting for liberation. She has worked in community arts nonprofits for the past 15 years, and founded the Art of Growing Up, inspired by her rites of passage research and experience living in Ghana. Julia holds a B.A. from Hampshire College in Studio Art and Youth Development, and completed her M.A.T in Art Education at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Art. She currently sits on the Philadelphia Commission for Women. Publishings include chapters in “Difficult Dialogues about Twenty-First-Century Girls” edited by Donna Marie Johnson and Alice E. Ginsberg, 2015, and the “Journal of Applied Arts & Health". Julia is a recipient of a Leeway Art and Change Grant and has exhibited her work in group and solo shows. Her art can also be found on the cover of "Re-Writing the Return to Africa," by Anne Francios and in "Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitcal Context of Multicultural Education," by Sonia Nieto and Patty Bode. As a facitator she brings expertise in leadership and organizational models, trauma informed approaches, rituals and creative processes, strategy, and white accountability.

More information and registration available at here.