Learning for Equity™ (L4E) curricula is by-design and on-demand, created to address systemic and institutional racism in response to emerging issues specific to community and organization needs. L4E takes a strengths-based approach that acknowledges the inherent value of BIPOC communities and communities of color. Using a community-based participatory approach in the design and implementation that incorporates a focus on building the agency of participants to affect change.
L4E courses and workshops are specifically designed to equip participants to learn, grow and collaborate to drive policy and systems-change at local and state levels. To date, participants have demonstrated that, overall, the program provided valuable skills.
- 90% felt the workshops provided valuable information that was relevant to their needs
- 96% increased their understanding of trauma-informed practice and leadership
- 85% felt better prepared to be a systems change leader
- 96% would recommend to a friend or family member
- 100% planned on using what they learned in their life and work
Our Projects
Virtual Course Offering
Learning for Equity is proud to increase access to our capacity building modules through the delivery of our virtual education programming. The Canvas virtual platform…
CHC Internship Program
Serving as the backbone organization since 2018, CHC has been building the capacity of resident leaders to ensure that they have the individual capacities…
Academic Partners
Learning for Equity is proud to partner with local academic institutions to deliver courses that enable community members to be change makers and empower them to enact systems change in their communities.
Best Start
Serving as the backbone organization since 2018, CHC has been building the capacity of resident leaders to ensure that they have the individual capacities…
South LA Decides
South LA Decides (SLAD) is a Community-Based Grant Making initiative designed to ensure that residents in South LA and Compton participate in the decision-making…
Department of Public Health Community Health Worker Course Delivery and Coaching
Serving as the backbone organization since 2018, CHC has been building the capacity of resident leaders to ensure…
Equity in the C-Suite
Through a grant from the Community Benefit Giving Office, Cedars-Sinai has been supporting the launch of our new signature initiative called Equity in the C-Suite…
MVP Bench
Learning For Equity is proud to offer the Most Valuable Partner (MVP) bench as an extension of Learning for Equity’s offerings. As we continue to support local communities…
Alumni
Upcoming alumni engagements and spotlights will be featured on Learning For Equity’s instagram page…
Virtual Course Offering
Learning for Equity is proud to increase access to our capacity building modules through the delivery of our virtual education programming. The Canvas virtual platform houses self-paced modules for several of our accredited certificate programs including Learning for Equity’s signature program: MasterClass for Youth Activists.
MasterClass for Youth Activists is a series of learning modules that will address core competencies needed to support aspiring activists in leading authentic, inclusive, and sustained activities towards achieving a more equitable future. Participants earn a certificate from Pacific Oaks College and receive a $1,000 stipend, funded by the California Endowment. This series takes place in the summer and involves an intensive 8-week educational experience for California youth organizers, ages 16-18. We are now accepting applications for MasterClass! Please complete the application by May 30th, 2022.
For questions about the canvas virtual platform, please reference our course calendar or send all inquiries to Learning4Equity@risingcommunities.org
CHC Internship Program
Learning For Equity oversees CHC’s internship program. The internship program partners with educational institutions in Los Angeles to provide unique learning opportunities for interns to develop their intellectual, personal, and professional career goals. Working as an intern with CHC can be a valuable and fulfilling experience as we work to improve the health of underserved populations in the Los Angeles area. As part of the CHC team, interns get the opportunity to:
- Develop important leadership and communication skills
- Deepen their understanding of the social equity, equity in community resources, and equity in environmental resources in their community
- Learn about the challenges and benefits of serving others in an urban context
- Meet and serve with like-minded individuals
L4E has existing partnerships with several organizations. They include—
- Charles R. Drew University
- LA Angeleno Corps
- LA Promise Fund – The Intern Project
- Loyola Marymount University
- UCLA Fielding School of Public Health (FSPH)
- Public Health Training Program on Population Health Advocacy
- UCLA Public Health Scholars Training
For more information about the internship program or to apply, please contact: Learning4Equity@risingcommunities.org
Academic Partners
Pacific Oaks College is a valuable partner in supporting CHC’s mission of deploying capacity building workshops throughout various communities in Los Angeles. CHC’s Social Change Institute in partnership with Pacific Oaks College designed and delivered curriculum for a series of workshops to support capacity building for the Best Start Community Partnerships. There are four modules and a total of twelve workshops, that address the core competencies needed to position the Best Start Community Partnerships for future success. All participants will earn a certificate from Pacific Oaks College for every module completed.
Charles Drew University
Learning for Equity works in partnership with Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science pipeline department to expand the educational capacity of underrepresented youth throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area to ensure their long-term success, health, and well-being through the facilitation of the Community Health Youth Advocates (CHYA) and Public Health Advocates (PHA) programs. These programs expose underrepresented high school students to health systems, the healthcare landscape, local and global health disparities, while empowering them to work towards a degree and career within healthcare. Additionally, students are provided stipends for their involvement, obtain mentorship, engage with mental health course curriculum, and prepare for college courses.
Best Start
Serving as the backbone organization since 2018, CHC has been building the capacity of resident leaders to ensure that they have the individual capacities, organizational competencies, and knowledge of strategies to engage in collaborative policy and systems change actions. Learning for Equity has supported this initiative through the offering of capacity building workshops for representatives from Best Start Communities region 2. Representatives are eligible to earn accredited certificates once they complete the coursework.
For more information, please visit: https://www.beststartcommunities.com/
South LA Decides Delegate Trainings
South LA Decides (SLAD) is a Community-Based Grant Making initiative designed to ensure that residents in South LA and Compton participate in the decision-making process to distribute funding to organizations focused on increasing the health and well-being of children ages zero to five in their communities. The regional task force’s role is to elevate local issues affecting all Best Start Region 2 by developing recommendations to increase systems-change impact and stewarding community-based grant making. Learning for Equity supports SLAD’s efforts through the delivery of educational courses, workshops and trainings, to prepare new delegates and task force members by improving their individual capacities, organizational competencies, and knowledge of strategies to engage in policy and systems change.
South LA Decides Incubator Program
The SLAD incubator program is a grassroots effort to support local non-profits and their leaders in developing the competencies and skills to create impactful proposals that will be submitted to the regional task force. The incubator program supports capacity building that focuses on the metrics-based implementation process, which can lead to sustained growth via strategic management. CHC is committed to being a tactical capacity building partner through expanding the knowledge and skills that nonprofits need to succeed in moving systems change strategies. Nonprofits who successfully complete the course work of CHC’s incubator program have an accepted set of metrics and milestones driven by community indicators to track systems change progress. This ensures that they can make predictable outcomes and equips them with the knowledge to mitigate several avoidable risks. Not only does this increase their rate of success, it also ensures a more effective and sustainable nonprofit landscape.
Department of Public Health Community Health Worker Outreach Initiative: Course Delivery and Coaching
In partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Community Health Worker (CHW) Outreach Initiative, is a local initiative which mobilizes grassroots community outreach networks to circulate accurate and up-to-date information regarding COVID-19 and vaccinations countywide. This short-term initiative reinforces a community-based system of response, and fosters collaboration and cross-learning across different peer outreach models. Learning for Equity has helped to mobilized CHW’s throughout Los Angeles County through the delivery of trainings and capacity building modules that provide CHWs with information and skills needed to quickly, safely, and confidently conduct outreach priorities within communities most impacted by the virus. To date, Learning for Equity has supported hundreds of CHWs in slowing the spread of COVID-19, building vaccine confidence, and connecting them to useful resources that can be shared with their residents in their communities.
For more information about this program and upcoming trainings, please email Learning4Equity@risingcommunities.org and visit our course calendar.
Alumni
Upcoming alumni engagements and spotlights will be featured on Learning For Equity’s instagram page. Follow us to stay updated! https://www.instagram.com/l4e_chc/
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Our Unique Approach
Operationalizing anti-racism cannot be treated as a spectator sport nor a drop-in event. Operationalizing anti-racism must be approached with the same level of vigor that institutions reserve for initiatives critical to their very survival. The world is not one-dimensional but racism and all that it embodies, is extremely one-dimensional, leaving little room for innovation, and dialogue. Learning For Equity’s approach to supporting transformational culture change that embodies a JEDI framework, meets the client where they are by co-creating multi-year strategic goals with annually developed SMART objectives and quarterly metrics to help clients track their impact along the way. We use a three-pronged approach that integrates restorative, repetitive and transformative practices as guideposts for sustainability and impact.
RESTORATIVE: Dismantling Racism Means Dismantling White Supremacist Ideology
White supremacy is riddled with all the same issues that limit innovation, inclusivity, sustainability and most importantly growth. Building a restorative culture includes acknowledging harm, building positive relationships, taking collective responsibility and advancing repairing practices informed by those who have been and continue to be harmed by structurally racist systems, policies and institutions. White supremacy is a social construct that is deeply embedded into our society and generationally perpetuated through flawed systems, practices and mental models. JEDI efforts have been widely invested in for decades and have yielded little, if any, results against set metrics. White fragility has been identified as one of the key barriers to transformational change. JEDI strategies cannot achieve sustainable impact without a willingness to confront white supremacy ideology, regardless of how difficult it may be for people who identify as white, to acknowledge past and present harms connected to white supremacy. For this reason, our approach focuses on creating safe, healing spaces for whites as well as non-whites to share and grow in their JEDI practices together.
REPETITIVE: Repetition is a Tool for Integration
In keeping with evidence-based approaches to organizational development and change, we will partner with you to deploy a multi-year, multi-pronged, mixed methods approach to positioning ASU College of Health Solutions as a case study for how to meaningfully dismantle racism and operationalize equity in higher education. In addition to white fragility, another on-going barrier to impactful and sustainable JEDI transformations is the pernicious segregation of JEDI strategies. While having dedicated steering committees or task forces to ideate and drive JEDI plans is largely effective, these bodies eventually hit several walls that are guised in ‘lack of funding’ or the ‘centralization of resources and/or people.’ Our idea of repetition centers on patternmaking. Humans gravitate towards patterns and our minds enjoy the certainty of rituals, which makes dismantling inequitable patterns all the more difficult. Like addiction treatments or weight loss programs, we use the tactic of repetition to establish new patterns and practices to replace the unwanted ones. JEDI efforts should not be contingent on funding nor relegated to specific cultural events, departments or peoples. JEDI efforts should be a both/and proposition where these specific events, departments or peoples are accompanied by the repetitive presence of operationalized, integrated JEDI practices throughout the institution. Without repetitive, integrated strategies JEDI efforts become inherently inauthentic, and categorized as window-dressing. Our approach is disruptive, which is what JEDI work needs to be in order to create sustainable transformational change.
TRANSFORMATIVE: Sustainable JEDI practices change people, not just systems
Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) speaks to the liberating nature of education. The exercise of teaching others moves from transactional to transformative when everyone embraces their interconnectedness and the social responsibility of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. The successful transformation of an institution from its entrenchment in historically white supremacist systems, policies and practices is most evidenced by the social, emotional transformation of its people. We focus on the transformation of people as well as systems and policies. People, not things, will ultimately be responsible for sustaining JEDI policies and practices. Transformation requires agency and agency requires power. JEDI strategies that create sustainable transformation systematize the sharing of power at all levels of the institution.
For more information, please visit our course catalog and email: l4e@risingcommunities.org