Subscribe to learn more from WKKF
Δ
Racial equity means that everyone, regardless of their race or ethnicity, has a fair shot at opportunities and success. It’s about ensuring that no one’s identity determines how they are treated or the life outcomes they experience.
Achieving racial equity requires three things. First, it means transforming the way we organize ourselves – what some people call systems, practices and policies – in every setting as neighbors, classmates, colleagues and members of the larger community. Second, it means engaging in racial healing to better understand each other and the ways that racism impacts our lives. Third, it requires communities to collectively envision an equitable future and actively work toward that vision.
Racial healing allows us to build relationships within our communities l to increase our collective capacity to work toward achieving racial equity.
When it comes to racial equity and racial healing, we support organizations that:
We also support initiatives such as:
This is why we focus our health equity grantmaking in two priority areas:
Good health is about more than medical care. Health equity means removing economic and social barriers that prevent people from experiencing optimal health, such as poverty, lack of transportation and education opportunities and environmental factors. We look for innovative initiatives that:
Healthy moms, healthy birthing people and healthy babies should be the starting point for a healthy society. Yet in the U.S., racial disparities in maternal and infant mortality and morbidity persist across all socioeconomic statuses – especially for Black and Indigenous families.Our grantmaking promotes peak health for birthing parents and our youngest children, prenatal through infancy. We look for initiatives that:
Approaches vary by location according to the expressed needs of our communities.
The Haiti Peer-Learning Network (HPLN) is a dynamic forum that fosters collaboration, innovation and systems change to improve the lives of Haitian children and families. It brings together more than 200 grantees, funding partners and diverse local and international stakeholders in public, private and nonprofit sectors to align efforts with local realities, priorities and opportunities.
Through intelligent study, cooperative planning and group action, the HPLN leverages the collective expertise and resources of its members to drive change across education, family economic security, food systems, health and leadership.
Since 2013, the HPLN has spurred the development and growth of transformative initiatives such as the Model School Network, the Haiti Food System Alliance, Kolektif Arcadins and strengthened regional health systems in southern and central Haiti.
Our grantee partner, AtentaMente, developed a comprehensive socio-emotional learning (SEL) program for preschool and primary school, adapted for Maya children and educators. Leveraging their experience working with educational authorities and in policymaking, the organization is making SEL programming available to children throughout the Yucatán Peninsula.
AtentaMente reaches:
3
States in the Yucatán Peninsula
395
Preschools
450
Primary Schools
Learn more about AtentaMente
Welcome to our micro-regions of southern Mexico – dynamic Indigenous communities from the lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula to the misty highlands of Chiapas, from tropical to cloud forests, cenotes to rivers, plains to mountains, diversified systems like milpa and backyard vegetable gardens to apiaries and coffee plantations, from Yucatec Maya to Tsotsil and Tseltal people.
The inner Yucatan Peninsula and Chiapas Highlands represent great cultural and biological diversity but also share important traits…
Communities are reclaiming history long held by colonists, telling their own stories and writing their own futures, planting the seeds of progress in their ancestors’ earth, growing strong organizations, leadership and partnerships, and beginning to reap the rewards: thriving food systems, health systems, education models and income generation opportunities.
Nurtured more every day, the children are rising to lead and harvest a brighter future.
Budget information is crucial for informed decision-making and progress in early childhood education. The Early Childhood Education Budget book is a tool for Mississippi policymakers, educators and stakeholders to help them understand and evaluate the allocation of resources for our children.
Welcome to Mississippi. A state rich in culture and tradition. A place where civil rights activists still courageously carry the mantle for just and equitable policies. A community continually reckoning with its history of slavery and the modern-day impacts.
William Faulkner once said, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.” This Deep South state holds some of the widest racial disparities, a consequence of historical policies and racialized systems that still perpetuate inequities in pay, access to care and opportunities to work.
However, at WKKF, we see Mississippi as a beacon of light in the South.
In Grand Rapids, we concentrate our investments on bringing inclusive growth and equitable access to opportunity in:
Our approach to racial equity and community engagement is grounded in supporting the work and leadership of people of color. We emphasize building power within their communities to create more equitable systems, structures and narrative change.