Turning Words into Action
Paul Robinson, President & CEO
In the spirit of Juneteenth, recognizing an important part of our country’s history, the end of slavery, we want to share the following message our President & CEO sent to our team members today outlining how Home of the Innocents will begin the transformation to an anti-racism organization.:
Dear Team Members,
Since my first message about the stand our organization is taking against racism, I have found myself on a reflective, three-week journey. As I’ve listened, read, and learned, I’ve become more aware of the biases that exist around me. I have felt disappointment from people in my life that I thought I knew. Their careless comments and actions show their own racist biases. I took my first implicit bias test and found myself disappointed at what the results showed me about my own biases. What I have begun to realize is that we all have biases.
Over the course of the last three weeks, we have engaged in a series of conversations about racism in the organization, and our culture. More than 100 people participated in these discussions and I want to take a moment to thank each of them for being brave and speaking up, for being courageous and listening. We used the S.E.L.F. tool from Sanctuary, processing Safety, Emotion, Loss, and describing a Future for this organization. We conducted these meetings with the Sanctuary Commitments and our Core Values guiding us. Each meeting provided a deep discussion about the racism many on our team have faced their entire lives, the guilt of those just now waking to the reality of racism, and the desire we have to fix this, at least in our organization.
It is clear that the Home holds a revered place in our community. Each team member who participated in these meetings gave voice to their own struggles and to the importance of this organization taking a visible stand in our community’s response to systemic racism. Anyone can write an email taking a stand against racism, as I did three weeks ago. I was challenged in our meetings—how do we take that voice and turn it into action? How do we ensure real change will happen, not just empty words?
The answer is clear, at least to me. The Home must be a model of learning and transformation. We must be disruptive from top to bottom. We must take real action to make real change. Below I lay out what my Executive Team and I propose to do:
Board of Directors
• We must have tough conversations at the Board level and engage their support to create a more equitable, inclusive organization.
• We will need to engage in training for the Board, examine our Board composition, and recruit new members.
• We will need to look at the organization’s policies, set by the Board, for places we can be more equitable and inclusive.
• We will revisit our vision statement and core values to ensure that equity and inclusivity are present.
Leadership
• Within the next 30 days, we will write and approve an Anti-Racism Procedure that boldly states racism will not be tolerated at Home of the Innocents. All team members will be asked to sign a pledge that racism is unacceptable, that each of us agrees to support each other, to attend Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion training, and to hold each other and ourselves accountable for our behavior.
• Within the next 30 days, the Executive Team will begin a journey of self-examination, learn about our own implicit biases, and receive training that will teach us to truly lead the organization through our transformation. This work will extend to all leadership positions within the organization over the course of the year.
Training
• We will create a training series that will be required for all team members that will promote equity, inclusion, and cultural sensitivity.
Policies & Procedures Review
• We will undertake a comprehensive review of all Policies and Procedures to ensure we embed Sanctuary, our core values, and equity in all of them.
Community
• We will boldly share our activities to combat racism in our organization.
• We will revise our public policy agenda and actively advocate for equitable legislation at all levels of government.
• We will reach out to black organizations to seek partnership and learn how we can best support a positive community response.
• We hope to serve as a model of true transformation for others in the community.
As we move through all these areas, we commit to including your voices along the way. There are places for you to be engaged in the process whether you help us advocate, provide feedback on procedure changes, share your own cultural experiences, and most importantly, hold each other, and us, accountable.
The list above is not exhaustive. We will continue to work with our Diversity & Inclusion Team Member Engagement Group to implement some of the ideas you shared in our Coffee & Conversation discussions. However, if we are successful in the five critical areas outlined above and truly do the work, we will create a more equitable and inclusive organization that serves our team and our clients at the highest standards.
We will not be perfect. We will stumble along the way. However, we will take this journey together, committed to building a stronger team and a stronger organization.
I am grateful for everything you do each day to enrich the lives of those we serve.
Sincerely,
Paul W. Robinson MBA
President & CEO