Roadmaps and movements for racial equity

On Jan. 18, WKKF’s National Day of Racial Healing was observed by thousands of people across the U.S., with communities from Battle Creek, Michigan to New Orleans, and from Columbus, Ohio to Los Angeles hosting local events. Additionally, there have been more than 500,000 views of our YouTube Premiere virtual event in the first week. People eager to learn more and take action can check out six takeaways from the day, which includes further opportunities to explore the work of this year’s presenters and artists.  
 
In honor of WKKF’s sixth annual National Day of Racial Healing, our partner, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, kicked off the new year with an intergenerational conversation about systemic disparities of racial, economic, climate and health justice. The conversation, called Reckoning & Release: A Community Conversation About Healing, was part of the #IamNewOrleans conversation series.
 
Are you an evaluator, funder or nonprofit looking to embed racial equity in your evaluation process? Explore Doing Evaluation in Service of Racial Equity, a transformational series of guides, commissioned by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and written by Community Science. Watch the webinar series to learn more.
 
The Data Center, a local partner in the research of WKKF’s Business Case for Racial Equity, released the first of several academic briefs on systemic inequity in New Orleans. The briefs are designed to be a roadmap to prosperity. New Orleans and the Hollow Prize Problem: Structural Limits on Black Political Power looks at an era when cities like New Orleans were first electing Black mayors; meanwhile, city governments were losing the revenue and influence needed to serve their communities. 
 
On Dec. 21, the Mexican newspaper La Jornada Maya ran an article in both Mayan and Spanish about grantee SOLYLUNA’s distribution of 1,200 bilingual Mayan-Spanish books and activity packets to Yucatán children. It is part of an initiative called U Kúuchil Xook SOLYLUNA (SOLYLUNA Reading Club). WKKF has long partnered with Ohio State University to support SOLYLUNA’s efforts to develop early Mayan and Spanish literacy skills among Indigenous preschool children in the Yucatán Peninsula.
 
On Jan. 12, Engineering News-Record featured grantee Jim Ansara and his organization Build Health International (BHI) among its “2021 Top 25 Newsmakers.” The distinction was given for BHI’s highly impactful work bringing quality health care infrastructure to low-income settings around the world, including Haiti. The construction industry publication ran a lengthy profile of BHI in September, which detailed the organization’s collaboration with WKKF grantees Partners in Health and Health Equity International.