Equity-Based Facilitation
We work with businesses, non-profit organizations, service providers, and community-based groups to help them understand, evaluate, and discuss the issues that matter to them. Our equity focus means that questions of inclusion, access, participation, decision-making, and outcomes are embedded in and central to the activities, tools, and discussion questions we use for facilitation. By working with our hosts in our planning, we ensure that our facilitation is relevant, useful, and stimulating for the participants.
Our Services Include:
- Priority identification
- Discussion facilitation
- Custom-designed activities
We are committed to equity, transparency, sustainability, and integrity in the programs we support and organizations with whom we collaborate.
- We support community based programs in evaluating and building diversity, equity and inclusion strategies into their work.
- We conduct focus groups to help organizations understand the needs of the population being served.
- We evaluate program successes and areas of deficit to develop policy and procedures to increase capacity, funding, and participant engagement and success.
Recent Work
Independent Sector - community building strategy
Independent Sector (I.S.) is a national organization that focuses on strengthening civil society to ensure all people in the United States thrive through results-centered and racial equity-focused strategies. UrbanKind Institute is developing a national community-building strategy for Independent Sector to convene and facilitate a neighborhood focused advising team that provides guidance, grass-roots perspectives, and insights on strategic planning. This advising team is designed to include community organizers from across the United States representing Native Americans, Asian and South Pacific Islander, Hispanic and Black communities. The team also includes an additional organizer focused primarily on Environmental Justice.
Environmental Cultural Humility Workshops (2020)
UrbanKind Institute offers environmental cultural humility workshops to organizations and groups. Developed in 2019-20 along with Akiima Price of APriceConsulting, Black Environmental Collective member and learning instigator Michelle King, these workshops aim to improve the cultural competency of white-led environmental organizations working with historically and currently marginalized groups throughout the region. These workshops interrogate dominant narratives about environment/nature, highlighting their intersections with (and origins in) racism, classism, and sexism, and ask participants to interrogate their own conceptions of environment/nature and what stories they and their organization tell about environment/nature. We introduce concepts, such as cultural humility, that are central to the practice of respectful community outreach and engagement. If you are interested in holding a workshop series, please contact Dr. Jason Beery at jason@urbankind.org.
International Gaucher Alliance Focus Group (2021)
UrbanKind Institute (UKI) was engaged by the International Gaucher Alliance (IGA) an international umbrella group that represents the interests of Gaucher patients, families and non-profit Gaucher and other rare disease patient groups around the world. IGA was interested in having a professional facilitator without a background or connection to pharmaceuticals or biotech; and selected UKI to facilitate focus groups to collect the community's thoughts and perceptions on gene therapy due to their specialization in applied research. UKI facilitated three 90-minute virtual focus groups, engaging members of the Gaucher Community from around the world utilizing guided survey questions, developed by the International Gaucher Alliance, to draw out relevant data. UrbanKind Institute analyzed the findings, identifying themes that arose from the discussions with the groups with a non-biased lens and prepared a report to support future research endeavors.
Our previous facilitation work includes:
- Eva P. Mitchell Senior Apartments Engagement (2017/2018)
- Pittsburgh Food Policy Council Retreat Facilitation (2017)
- Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation Board Retreat Facilitation (2017)
Interested in learning more?
If you are interested in learning more, please contact Janora Bey at janora@urbankind.org