In Crisis
ABOUT OUR DEI VISION
We envision a community that is equitable, just, and prosperous for everyone. To bring this vision to life, reflecting on how we do our work and show up for our community is vital. In 2021, we immersed ourselves in a year-long diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative led by a nationally renowned DEI consultant, EnterChange Group. We dug into policies, practices, and structures across CAP to explore one of three big questions embedded in our strategic plan: How do we address race, power, and privilege in the work we do?
Out of this work came an equity work plan that we are working through. In 2022, we restructured the role of our Chief Strategy Officer, whose focus includes executing our equity work plan and ensuring the strategic direction of CAP aligns with our equity goals.
In 2023, we convened a diverse internal DEI Taskforce comprised of employees across roles and impact teams to draft our DEI Vision and work alongside CAP leadership to move us forward in our quest to ensure equity and justice are integrated into every facet of our work. CAP leadership explored types of statements and engaged in conversations about the structure and sentiment for our own, and we began drafting. Once we had an initial draft, we shared it with the CAP board, community partners, donors, employees, and our DEI consultant to gather feedback, and our DEI Taskforce engaged in an initiative to draft three promise statements to be included as part of our DEI Vision.
Our DEI Vision is the heart of our work, and its promises will guide us in moving equity, justice, and prosperity forward in our community. Early in the visioning process, we were inspired by language from the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 that encourages community action agencies “to give promise of progress toward elimination of poverty” through their work in their communities. Vanessa Philbert, our CEO, connected this idea of “promise” to three components of our work – an employer, a service provider, and a community partner, and the rest is collaborative history.