Rest as a Form of Resistance
Amy Tran-Calhoun, Chief of Staff
At Diversity Talks, we shift mindsets. We create unique learning environments where adult professionals are the learners and trained, skilled, knowledgeable youth are the facilitators of learning on topics of diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism. More than professional development, we provide foundational training to transform organizational cultures and ways of being. Within our own organization, we strive to embody the growth, behaviors, and cultural shifts that we train on in our workshops.
During the pandemic, we grew our team from a staff of two to ten in just one year. While rapid growth has been exciting for our reach and impact, it has also been challenging and turbulent for our organizational culture. In order to remain rooted in our vision, mission, and purpose, we recognized how essential it was to step back, reconnect, and revise our organizational goals. Over a series of all-staff meetings and reflection exercises, we synthesized our big audacious ambitions down to three primary organizational goals:
- ENHANCE OUR IMPACT: Support youth and adults to grow from culturally destructive to culturally proficient by providing a spectrum of carefully scaffolded personal and professional development services.
- DEEPEN OUR ANALYSIS: Measure the long term changes of organizational cultures by expanding our research and assessment tools to be able to analyze both individual cultural competency and structural manifestations of oppression across entire organizations and communities.
- ENSURE WHOLEBEING: Refine policies and practices to better ensure staff and youth’s wholebeing by incorporating emphasis on self-care and promoting greater work/life balance.
As the year comes to a close, we want to reflect on our third goal, ensure wholebeing. In the United States, where we are socialized to believe that talking about race is impolite and inappropriate (sources: White Fragility, Waking Up White, Race Talk), our antiracism work is inherently difficult and trying. Add in a national racial reckoning, a global pandemic, and the unpredictable challenges of daily living, most days feel physically, mentally, and spiritually taxing. Yet, each of us at Diversity Talks is unapologetically and undeniably committed to antiracism in our personal and professional lives. In order to practice what we preach and cultivate a healing workplace for ourselves and each other, we must prioritize our wholebeing — the wellbeing of our mind, body, and spirit. We do this regularly by offering both an unrestricted workday and an unlimited PTO policy. And yet, our staff has reported varying degrees of burnout and stages of being unwell. In light of this data, we had to ask why.
Over the past 21 months of this unending pandemic, our team has:
- Innovated and adapted our entire workshop and training format from in-person to virtual
- Trained and provided ongoing support to 100+ youth from across 16 states and 2 countries
- Provided youth-led professional development to 7 school districts and 19 organizations
- Provided adult-led anti-racism training to 27 organizations
- Launched the inaugural Abolitionist Leader Fellowship for 20 educators across the United States
Our professional development has:
- Shifted the mindsets of 46% of adult participants
- Changed the behaviors of 80% of adult participants
- Increased the cultural competency of 32% of educators
- Increased the confidence/self-esteem of 93 youth facilitators
- Empowered 93 youth facilitators to believe that their voice has power in a room full of adults
- Impacted over 12,400 students across the United States
We are honored and proud to have achieved these milestones with ingenuity, resilience, and excellence.
But, y’all — we are TIRED. All of these good results came from really hard work. Work without proper rest replicates systems of racism, capitalism, and inequity. As practitioners who are committed to dismantling systems of oppression, we are well overdue for an extended period of rest. In order for us to effectively contribute our talents to social change and racial justice, we must rest. We believe our most valuable organizational asset is our people, and we have to prioritize preserving them. They are the soul of our work.
In 2021, Diversity Talks received a generous Talent Health and Wellness Sustainability Grant from the Margulf Foundation to tend to our team’s social, emotional, and physical well-being. While we have received general operating support from the Margulf Foundation since 2019, we are grateful for being able to think broadly and imaginatively about what would add to our team’s sustainability as humans.
With input and consent from our entire team, we have decided to use these funds to close our office for a three-week all-staff sabbatical from December 20, 2021 — January 7, 2022. Our three-week sabbatical will provide each staff member with the autonomy to decide what rest and recharging look like for them. We hope that our partners will support us as we take this much-needed break.
As antiracism practitioners, we carry the weight of facilitating difficult and uncomfortable conversations in order to shift mindsets, develop more culturally competent human beings, and change the world into a more equitable place for our youth, their families, and their communities. To embody our core values and build a sustainable workplace amidst chaos, we must prioritize and practice intentional rest. If you are in a position of leadership, ask yourself, what practices and policies do you implement to prioritize rest for your staff, especially those who are most marginalized? How are you caring for your most important asset — your people?
