Anti-racism is central to a mission to support children's wellbeing, including their social and emotional development; Children’s Institute is committed to placing it there. Led with involvement throughout our organization including Board members, community partners, and staff leaders of the Racial Equity and Justice Initiative change team (a team of St. Joseph Neighborhood Center’s “REJI” project for Greater Rochester), we are developing, revising, and critiquing our process and products to ensure that they reflect our commitment to anti-racism and social justice, and to the Black Agenda Group’s tenets of racism as a public health crisis.
 
As part of this commitment, we have prepared a comprehensive open-access community-wide resource, “How Has the Pandemic Exposed Structural Racism; and what role can allied organizations play in standing with and prioritizing supports for local communities of color?" In slide deck form, this is an account of the vastly disproportionate health, economic, and educational fallout on communities and people of color revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic, April-July 2020—nationally, state-wide, and in Rochester. This report captures information that:   

• Illuminates pre-existing racial inequities in health, education, and economics that were overwhelmingly exacerbated during this pandemic,
• Provides a timeline of inaction and/or inadequate response that led to morbidity and mortality that was preventable, if acted upon sooner, and
• Illustrates the imperative of implementing and coordinating policies to dismantle structural racism throughout the Monroe County community, in order to reduce or eliminate harm among families of color who bear the greatest burden of this pandemic.    

As community partners continue to learn together, Children’s Institute is curating, creating, and sharing anti-racist resources for educators, parents, and other child-serving organizations through our new Racism and Social Justice web page. The purpose is to highlight key learnings, bring awareness, and inspire action to end inequities as we together confront #RacismAsAPublicHealthCrisis. Featured topics to date address:

• Talking about Racism with Children   
• Racism as a Public Health Crisis
• Anti-Racism is a Core Component of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
• Resources from our Partners

 
We invite you to join as we seek to collectively influence the goal of anti-racism, as we stand together with communities of color in tangible ways to support equity in wellbeing among every one of their children and families.  
 
We welcome your feedback. Contact us to connect with our team.

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