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Understanding Local Context and Opportunities

It is important to understand the racial history of a community or organization and its current dynamics of race and power. This kind of mapping helps formulate strategies and processes that could be effective for your specific community or organization. Sometimes strategies are chosen because they worked somewhere else. It is important to ask why these strategies worked there - what were the capacities present to support the implementation of the strategy - rather than to assume it was just the strategy alone that was effective.

Specific topics covered:

• Learning About a Community's History of Racial Dynamics - Learning about: racial history of the community, past change efforts, how people talk about racism, and capacities within a community or organization that might facilitate your work (e.g. funding, institutional supports, skills, leadership).
• Understanding Current Dynamics of Race and Power - How to do a power analysis and understanding power and governance structures (formal and informal) within a community or organization.
• Building on Current Opportunities - Getting Ahead of the Curve - Reviewing the political, demographic, economic and other trends and opportunities for this place or organization, and major community initiatives that might provide opportunities for partnership.