Beyond Diversity 101
FOUNDATIONING
GOAL
The goal of diversity training should be to nurture into wholeness the separations we currently perceive across class, race, sexuality and gender. However, the models traditionally used in diversity training's have tended to instill guilt, assign blame, or vindicate victimhood according to narrowly conceived hierarchies of oppression. Participants often leave such workshops overwhelmed by negative emotions and even less able to be effective agents for change.
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Beyond Diversity 101 sharply breaks from this vicious cycle of guilt, blame and victimhood. Together, through a courageous and vivid vision of liberation, we will work toward transforming systematic oppression, build skills to shift mindsets, and co-create wholeness for self, community, and the world!
FRAMEWORKS
BD101 participants, regardless of background, are asked to engage with models that challenge traditional notions of how oppression operates. Workshop participants learn to identify, then to begin dismantling, the subtle ways in which apparent victims and apparent oppressors can both perpetuate the classist, sexist, racist and homophobic status quo. Through a variety of models and well-designed activities, participants will consider unjust and oppressive uses of power at the personal, organizational and societal levels. Together we are empowered by recognizing a dynamic vision of wholeness.
HOW WE WORK
Equity and Justice training has traditionally been based in models driven by guilt and blame. We believe that if the goal is to become a more whole society, such trainings are highly ineffective. We need to move beyond the vicious cycles that are embedded in these old “Diversity 101” and more recent "Get rid of the least woke" models.
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We can, in fact, abolish systematic discrimination within and without. It requires recognizing, taking responsibility, shifting mindsets, continually building and utilizing effective skills and being guided always by a vision of liberation for all.
MIND. BODY. SPIRIT.
Lecture and presentation, large and small group discussion: these intellectual efforts are only one dimension of a holistically conceived curriculum. Integral and primary to BD 101 is the establishing a circle of mutual respect, good faith and a commitment to deep caring, which is able to sufficiently ‘hold’ the group through both the painful and joyful revelations that arise in the course of the workshop.
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The intuitive is honored along side the intellectual. We especially tend to the body in the midst of this transformational learning. A massage therapist is on the BD101 staff during the course of the workshop, providing one-on-one sessions.
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Music and expressive movement, yoga and qi gong, as well as activities out of doors, are integrated into each day’s schedule. Care is taken to select workshop environs that are comfortable, where nourishing food is served. Each aspect of the intensive is designed to support, in as holistic a manner as possible, the deep work of the participants.