Monthly Archives: August 2021

A 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Saturday, resulting in the deaths of over 1,200 people and injuring thousands more, according to CNN. The Haitian government has declared a state of emergency as hospitals are filled to capacity and displaced people struggle to find accommodation.

And now, meteorologists are warning that Tropical Storm Grace will hit the island nation this week, potentially disrupting recovery efforts and exacerbating damages.

Occurring west of Haitis capital Port-au-Prince and just 60 miles from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred in 2010 which killed between 220,000 and 300,000 people and displaced thousands Saturdays earthquake sent shockwaves through a community reeling from political instability and rebuilding efforts.

After the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Mose in July, widespread civil unrest took over the country. Haitians protested government corruption and the countrys weak economic situation, leading to an influx of violence and food and fuel shortages.

And despite the allocation of billions of dollars to support the country in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake, missteps from international groups and public institutions have prevented Haiti from fully recovering.

For this reason, humanitarians and Haitians alike are asking the international community to be intentional and cautious about how they support the country in the wake of Saturdays earthquake.

"I offer my sympathies to the relatives of the victims of this violent earthquake which caused several losses of human lives and property in several geographical departments of the country," Prime Minister Ariel Henry wrote on Twitter as part of a series of tweets about the situation. We need a lot of support to help the population, especially the wounded.

While Henry has not yet called on the international community for support, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Global Citizens around the world can help those affected by the earthquake in Haiti by donating to organizations doing work on-the-ground, as well as by sharing factual information on social media from reputable sources.

Haiti Communitere is a community resource center that supports local groups in Haiti by providing funds, resources, and space. Since the 2010 earthquake, the Port-au-Prince-based organization has supported earthquake recovery efforts for communities in Haiti and is currently assessing the damage from Saturdays earthquake to best coordinate local efforts.

Donate to Haiti Communitere here.

Several groups in Haiti, including Haiti Communitere, have suggested donating to the HERO Foundation to provide tourniquets and medical training to police officers in Haiti. As search-and-rescue efforts continue in the country, providing medical supplies, individual first aid kits (IFAK), and medical training are essential to help as many people recover from the earthquake as possible.

Donate to the HERO Foundation here.

The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF) renewed calls to support its emergency relief fund, which began as a way to assist Haitians affected by the 2010 earthquake. As a local organization, HERF distributes donations to organizations based in Haiti that are coordinating grassroots efforts to help those in need.

Donate to HERF here.

The Florida-based organization Hope for Haiti is committed to on-the-ground efforts in Les Cayes, one of the cities most affected by Saturdays earthquake. These efforts include distributing emergency kits, opening an infirmary for those in need, and partnering with medical teams to identify which areas of the country can most benefit from additional health care assistance.

Donate to Hope for Haiti here.

Ayiti Community Trust was founded to help develop short-term aid into long-term support, supporting several local initiatives in Haiti to address poverty, education, and environmental concerns. In the wake of the latest earthquake in Haiti, the group launched the Earthquake Relief Fund to support local Haitian-led organizations.

Donate to Ayiti Community Trust here.

Project St. Anne (PSA) began as a way to support educational opportunities for vulnerable children in Haiti, but has expanded its efforts to support relief efforts. Because of its local coordination, PSA has ties to community organizations that are serving as on-the-ground support systems for those impacted by natural disasters.

To support its efforts to help vulnerable people after Saturdays earthquake, PSA asks that people donate to its Zelle account, the information for which can be found on the organizations website.

Learn more about how to support PSAs efforts here.

You can join the Global Citizen Live campaign to defeat poverty and defend the planet by taking action here, and become part of a movement powered by citizens around the world who are taking action together with governments, corporations, and philanthropists to make change.

Read more from the original source:

6 Ways You Can Help Haiti Right Now Wherever You Are in the World - Global Citizen

Cannabis has many healing properties and when used to combat anxiety, pain and symptoms of chronic illness, many Black women have shared that using it as part of a health and wellness routine can have life changing benefits.

During the 2021 ESSENCE Festival of Culture, panelists Michele Harrington, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Foria Wellness, a wellness company that sits at the intersection of intimacy and cannabis, Dr. Safiya Lyn-Lassiter, the founder of Ask Dr. Lyn, a South Florida based company that helps people acquire their medical marijuana card, and Mary Pryor, the co-founder of Cannaclusive, an organization created to facilitate fair representation of minority cannabis consumers, sat down together for a powerful discussion on the positive impacts of normalizing medical marijuana in the Black community.

The women spoke candidly about how positively their success with cannabis as healing has been received by their peers and the community thus far.

[Cannabis] is a medicine, says Pryor. And I think that we have to speak to that more. We have to be more honest about how health and equality affects us across the board, especially as Black women, and what education around this plant can really do.

Spreading the word is a critical component, explains Pryor, who has been very vocal about using cannabis to help manage her Crohnes disease.

There are so many things that are changing every day with how the science works and we have to try to educate each other on a regular basis and not be afraid anymore, Pryor adds.

After discovering the positive benefits of using cannabis products to help combat her anxiety during the pandemic, Harrington shared the companys products with some of her close girlfriends and found that they also saw improvements from using cannabis products. Convinced more Black women need to know about the alternative, Harrington reached out to Foria Wellness to offer her services to partner on supporting the popular intimacy brands diversity approach.

Everybody was raving about their pain relief and using the tonic for their anxiety, says Harrington. And I pitched to Foria and said, youre not leaning into this multi-cultural market. We dont know about you. I pitched to them and they created a space for me. I pretty much pulled up my seat to the table.

And we have to keep pulling up to those tables to counterbalance the narrative, insists Pryor.

There are a lot of stereotypes and things that were told to us about our use of this plant, that simply isnt true and its been kind of used against us in terms of criminalization and not given us a chance to have operational businesses or be included in this industry, she explains. But when you think about whos in jail and whos seen as the bad guy its mostly Black and brown people.

Both women shared their hopes for how Black women can continue to propel the momentum of this movement forward, as both consumers and entrepreneurs.

My wellness hope for Black women is conversation and intergenerational sharing and downloading of what we need to live better, be better and want better, says Pryor. There are many things that may not have been taught to us given how weve grown up, so we have a lot of catching up to do on a regular basisthe willingness and the intent is what matters.

Harrington agrees.

My wellness hope for Black women is for us to be intentional with our time and making it a routine to have some sort of me time, shared Harrington. If were not making time for ourselves and being available and present, its not going to allow us to be available or present for anyone else. And also, spreading the word [about cannabis as a tool for healing] and continuing to touch other people so that were continuously spreading the message and changing the narrative.

Watch the full conversation above.

Read more here:

Getting Real About Normalizing Conversations Around Cannabis and Healing In Black Communities - Essence

More than five years ago, several presidents of North Carolina Community College System institutions were visiting the NCState College of Education when the discussion turned to the professional development of community college leaders and how NCState could help support those goals.

In 2015, the College of Education received a $525,000 grant from the John M. Belk Endowment to start the Envisioning Excellence for Community College Leadership program.

Led by Dean Mary Ann Danowitz, D.Ed. who was head of the College of Educations Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at the time W. Dallas Herring Professor Audrey Jaeger, Ph.D., and Associate Professor James Bartlett, Ph.D., the Envisioning Excellence program integrated evidence-based best practices into leadership training programs to help community college leaders improve student success and institutional performance.

With more than $10 million in additional funding from the John M. Belk Endowment in 2018, the program evolved into the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research, allowing the NCState College of Education to further the preparation of future community college presidents, provide ongoing leadership development to community college executives and build capacity for evidence-based decision making and applied research.

Today, the Belk Center supports all 58 of North Carolinas community colleges and is helping produce the next generation of community college leaders through the College of Educations community college leadership doctoral program.

The Belk Center provides critical services to North Carolinas community college through its expertise in executive leadership development and data analyses, said Jaeger, who today serves as executive director of the Belk Center. This work extends NCStates land-grant commitment to every corner and community of the state supporting some of the most underserved populations in pursuit of postsecondary education.

When community college presidents met at the College of Education back in 2015, they were aware that nearly half of North Carolinas 58 community college presidents were expected to retire by 2019.

To address this challenge, the College of Education transformed the way it prepares community college presidents, redesigning the adult and community college education doctorate degree to become the community college leadership program, which helps to produce a pipeline of community college leaders who are prepared to tackle modern challenges.

The cohort-based program, housed in Raleigh and Charlotte, combines the experience and expertise of sitting community college presidents and College of Education faculty for a course of study that blends theory, research and best practices and utilizes a practice-oriented curriculum in leadership that emphasizes equity, completion, learning and labor market outcomes.

A partnership between the community college leadership program and the Belk Center has also allowed for the creation of the innovative and award-winning Executive Mentorship Program, which pairs doctoral students with a current community college leader who serves as their mentor.

These mentors offer each student access to opportunities to experience leadership in practice, ask questions to connect classroom learning to practice and provide career advice to help ensure they are prepared to advance their careers after completing their doctorate, Bartlett said.

Lance Gooden 22EDD, dean of Building, Engineering and Skilled Trades at Durham Technical Community College, said that being paired with Stanley Community College President John Enamait, Ph.D., as a mentor has been one of the most impactful experiences of his doctoral career.

He also credits the doctoral programs cohort model with helping him to get his current position at Durham Tech and for giving him the opportunity to network and collaborate with other researchers and community college leaders through projects and conferences.

When I started the program, I had maybe 14 years of experience in the community college system, but I knew nothing, he said. Having individuals like these professors who are in the classroom with that deep, rich practitioner knowledge and the outside individuals who really expand our knowledge of the community college system was fantastic.

The College of Educations community college leadership program is preparing the next generation of community college presidents through a course of study that blends theory, research and best practices and utilizes a practice-oriented curriculum in leadership that emphasizes equity, completion, learning and labor market outcomes.

Enroll now

In addition to the mentorship program, the doctoral program works with more than 20 community college leaders from North Carolina and across the country who serve on dissertation committees to ensure research connects to the complex problems of practice. Belk Center staff also work with students after they complete their dissertation research to help them develop practice briefs and disseminate their findings to the field.

One of the biggest changes has been the faculty commitment to integrating highly successful community college leaders into courses to provide intentional connections that enable students to connect theory to practice, Bartlett said. The research that students are conducting for their dissertations is now seeking more input from leaders in the field to help ensure they are addressing complex problems from a pragmatic lens.

Currently, 11 College of Education alumni are serving as presidents in the North Carolina Community College System with more working in administrative roles, including Yolanda S. Wilson, Ed.D., vice president of instruction at Wilkes Community College.

Wilson refers to her time as a doctoral student at NCState as one of the most meaningful professional development opportunities of her career. The coursework, she said, allowed her to think through complex problems related to teaching and learning, transfer and completion and economic mobility, challenging her to consider strategic ways to advance student success and achieve more sustainable outcomes.

Through rich discussion, case studies and immersion experiences, I was able to immediately apply what I learned at my workplace and eventually advance to a more senior administrative role at another institution, where I employ those skills for even greater impact, she said.

Through their research and professional opportunities, the Belk Center is also helping current community college leaders address pressing issues related to student success and transfer, teaching and learning initiatives, strategic planning and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The presidential leadership initiatives are focused around continuous improvement and equitable student outcomes that lead to transformational change across North Carolina and its communities, said Professor of the Practice Mary Rittling, Ed.D.

Over the past year, the Belk Center has hosted the Critical Conversations series, comprised of five virtual events focused on topics including leading for equity, teaching and learning and use of pandemic relief funding.

In addition, they created the Presidents Academy Teaching and Learning series which was designed collaboratively with the Aspen College Excellence Program and Achieving the Dream to engage presidents in deep-dive conversations about teaching and learning work. The Belk Center also designed and delivered two events specifically for the North Carolina Association of Community College Presidents focused on strategic finance and trustee relations.

At the Belk Center, we lean on the relationships we have with college leaders and practitioners to inform the research questions that are most impactful to pursue. We think its vital to provide leaders with timely, accessible and digestible research to help them make the decisions they need to for student success, said Holley Nichols, a research associate at the Belk Center. We know that this work is contributing to the policies and practices used in community colleges, which is incredibly fulfilling for our team.

In 2020, the Belk Center put research into practice by collecting and analyzing strategic plans from 55 North Carolina community colleges more than half of which were set to expire to determine how the institutions documented their intent and progress in promoting student success.

The study found that strategic plans varied widely across the North Carolina Community College System, leaving an opportunity for campuses to engage in planning efforts that align systemwide and with labor force needs. The research also suggested that not all community colleges had comprehensive, current or effective strategic plans. As a result of this research, many community college presidents expressed interest in receiving support, which led to the Belk Center developing individualized plans to assist community colleges through the strategic planning process.

The Belk Center stepped in at a critical point in our strategic planning process. Belk Center team members were expert consultants with our planning team and provided resources and reflective activities that led our team to develop evidence-based strategies and action plans for our Vision 2025 Plan, said Brian Merritt, Ph.D., president of McDowell Technical Community College. As a result of the Belk Centers support, our colleges vision to learn and grow is reflective of creating equitable solutions and outcomes for individuals, our community and our institution.

Tracy Mancini, Ed.D., president of Carteret Community College, said that her work with the Belk Center has helped pinpoint meaningful quantitative and qualitative data that have informed strategic efforts at the college.

The Belk Center helped Carteret Community College leaders review their mission, vision and values as they engaged in the strategic planning process and is conducting a diversity, equity and inclusion case study to evaluate the institutions efforts to reach underserved populations in the community.

Through working with the Belk Center, Mancini said that Carteret Community College has been able to examine data related to outreach, onboarding, retention and completion outcomes for unserved and underserved community members, providing a clear picture of efforts that are working and those that need to be refined.

Having access to accomplished current and former community college presidents, as well as experts in governance, planning and success initiatives, has provided our faculty, staff and trustees with the objectivity and confidence needed to develop and model effective support of student and community success, Mancini said.

Since 2015, the annual Dallas Herring Lecture has focused on national issues contextualized to North Carolina, inviting top community college leaders to speak on urgent and emerging topics, framing how to address the issues and proposing a path forward.

The impact of the event has grown exponentially over the past several years, with more than 1,800 people registering to attend the 2020 event. The transformation of the lecture from what was originally a faculty-centric event to one accessible to a national audience, has helped to elevate issues related to community colleges and led to action to address such issues in North Carolina.

For example, the 2019 Dallas Herring Lecture, delivered by Valencia College President Sanford Sandy Shugart, focused on Ecosystem Thinking in Higher Education: The Future of Transfer and argued that the system of transferring credits from community colleges to four-year universities must be redesigned.

Following that lecture, Belk Center researchers took an in-depth look at the variety of pathways, policies and student experiences that impact transfer for North Carolina students. As a result, they were able to provide individualized data to community college leaders that showed success rates for students who transferred to University of North Carolina System institutions and disaggregate the data to look at how transfer patterns differ among historically underserved groups.

The Belk Center also engaged in work surrounding teaching and learning initiatives as a result of the 2018 Dallas Herring Lecture, The Urgent Case: Centering Teaching and Learning in the Next Generation of Community College Redesign, delivered by Achieving the Dream President Karen Stout.

In response to that lecture, Belk Center researchers, postdoctoral scholars and graduate students worked with partners at Achieving the Dream to conduct six case studies of teaching and learning at community colleges across North Carolina. The goal of the studies was to understand how community colleges support teaching and learning on campus and what professional development opportunities are available for faculty.

The case studies demonstrated that community colleges have opportunities to create teaching and learning communities across their campuses to support faculty who are working in classrooms. In addition, the work helped identify key opportunities to support part-time and adjunct faculty who have a significant role in educating community college students.

The work that stemmed from the 2018 Dallas Herring Lecture has helped to facilitate the development of Teaching and Learning Hubs that will offer statewide professional learning programs. The hubs will support faculty at North Carolina community colleges by helping them to learn about, adopt, test and scale evidence-based strategies that have increased student success outcomes nationally.

These hubs, having multiple locations across the state, will work in complement with individual colleges teaching and learning centers and professional development educators to support scalable and sustainable professional learning activities for full-time and adjunct faculty that will impact thousands of North Carolina students for years to come, Jaeger said. This latest project is a natural evolution of the work weve done over the years to support our states community colleges and the communities they serve.

See more here:

Envisioning Excellence to the Belk Center: How the College of Education Has Changed the Way Community College Leaders are Supported, Prepared - NC...

One of toxic whiteness greatest successes is convincing white people that any talk about racism is taboo and, ironically, racist. Youve heard President Obama called a racist because, during his term in office, he talked about race. So, white people like me dont talk about race or racism. We dont build skills or comfort around talking about race and racism.

Chion Wolf :: Connecticut Public

Abby Anderson

Another success of toxic whiteness is indoctrinating white people that the worst possible thing that could happen to a white person is to be accused of racism. In some ways I think this is framed as worse than taking actions that directly hurt Black people. There were politicians who listened to hours of testimony from Black people about negative, blatantly racially motivated interactions with police and then voted against the police accountability bill those Black voters said they needed to feel and be safe in their communities. They were outraged when commenters called the position they took racist.

This narrative of toxic whiteness and the mindset it creates is grounded in the idea that racism is only one easy-to-define and recognize thing an overt, personal or systemic action clear and blatant in its intentional purpose to discriminate. In reality, racism is deep, wide, sneaky, and baked so deeply into our structures, lives, and thinking that we white folks mostly dont see it and rarely perpetuate it intentionally. When Black people or others impacted by these structures and thinking point racism out to us point out the difference between our intention and our impact, we dont believe them and instead accuse them of playing the race card or making everything about race.

Everything in American culture is about race. It was designed that way. Housing, education, policing, incarceration, banking, recreation, economic mobility, health care, all of it is rooted in racially-motivated philosophy and intent.

We are a country that declared in its founding documents that Black people only counted as 3/5th of a person. It took me a long time to realize that fraction wasnt simply about the math of legislative districting and political representation. In making that statement, the bedrock document of our country stated that Black individuals were only 3/5th human, just a little more than half. When a country builds itself and all of its institutions based on the belief that only some of the individuals in it are fully human, using skin color as a metric, it is impossible for those institutions to one day transform themselves to be color blind and race neutral. In fact, color blindness or race neutrality arent the goals. We need individuals and institutions to acknowledge their history and then listen to and hire from the community most harmed to lead the work needed to imagine and create new ways of being that give all people the chance to thrive.

It is hard work for white people to recognize the sea of privilege and toxic whiteness culture we are raised in and benefit from. Its scary. It shakes our foundations. It makes us question everything we were taught, the way weve developed our own value systems. That is all true. It is also true that the pain of recognizing complicity with toxic whiteness and racism cant be compared with the pain of being the target of racist actions, policies, and institutions, whether those are implicit or explicit, intended or inflicted with complete ignorance.

Asking for help is not valued in our society, no matter who you are. We value rugged individualism, honoring those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Rugged individualists dont ask for help. (By the way, Rugged Individualism is also a great marketing tool of toxic whiteness perpetuating the idea that things outside of ones control have no impact on their ability to succeed.) I had to go through a full burn-out resulting in a three month leave-of-absence before I recognized asking for help as a leadership strength, not a symbol of weakness. Our culture lionizes individual leaders, holding them up as the faces of the work, with philanthropic, shareholder, and campaign fundraising dollars funneled to personalities rather than missions.

Take an environment where asking for help is personally and organizationally discouraged and add toxic whiteness message that white people talking about, and inevitably making mistakes around, race and racism is a bigger problem than racism itself, and youre going to get a situation where white people calling each other in and saying, lets talk about how we are doing this race work and wrestle with the hard questions about how it impacts us as white people is rare.

Again, being victimized by racism and the resulting short- and long-term trauma and lack of access to opportunities is something I cannot understand. I will also repeat that understanding, processing, and undoing internalized white supremacy is hard, painful work for white people. Those two things can both be true and not in competition with each other. White people should not prioritize or center their pain and struggle over that of Black people and others who have been oppressed. White people should not explicitly or implicitly ask Black people for sympathy, understanding, or pity because undoing our toxic whiteness requires hard work. That is inappropriate. White people can and should talk with each other to validate and normalize the fact that the work is challenging, deeply uncomfortable, and requires time and emotional energy.

If we as white people do not name the difficulty and challenge, we continue to keep the work quiet, in the dark underground. Toxic whiteness, racism and all of the isms love the darkness. They thrive on white peoples fear, whether that be the fear that other white people will see them as a traitor to their race, someone pushing too hard for change outside of the comfortable -for-white-people norm, or fear that Black people and other traditionally oppressed people will get angry or name our mistakes and missteps on the way to undoing toxic whiteness. Heres the truth: both of those things will happen. White people talking about undoing whiteness angers some other white people. Some will loudly complain or make threats. Others will quietly take you aside.

White people working to undo toxic whiteness will make mistakes. We will misspeak, misunderstand ally-ship, step forward at the wrong times, unintentionally offend, and do harm. Black people and other individuals from marginalized groups will call us out. Sometimes they will do so gently, calling us in. Other times they will respond with anger and resentment, tired of holding space for yet another white persons educational process.

Heres the question us white folks have to ask ourselves: Are your fears of experiencing the legitimate discomfort of those situations bigger and more important than undoing the harm racism and oppression perpetrate on human beings every day? Are those fears more important than creating a world rooted in equity?

The work of dismantling white supremacy is systemic. Personal decisions and actions wont take us the whole way. But, this decision-point white people face is personal. We have the privilege to decide whether to face that discomfort, guilt, and fear. Black people do not get to choose whether racism will impact their lives.

Once you make the choice to walk into the space of unlearning toxic whiteness, naming that it is hard work is OK. Discussing your successes, failures, ongoing questions, fears, and exhaustion with other white people is OK. My conversations with white people, I knew, would both hold me while I cried and hold me accountable to doing better have been my lifeline as I do the work. Its not the only part of the work. Its one piece of the work. Its a piece that can no longer be underground.

Abby Anderson spent over a decade as executive director of a statewide nonprofit and is the founder of The Justice Walk

CTViewpoints welcomes rebuttal or opposing views to this and all its commentaries. Read our guidelines andsubmit your commentary here.

The rest is here:

Opinion White people need to circle up - The CT Mirror

August 17, 2021

Previously, Verve was named to the 2020 and 2019 National Winner list, the 2019 Best and Brightest in Wellness list and has received regional Best and Brightest honors in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Verve will be honored during the virtual Illuminate Business Summit celebration in November 2021.

"When talent can choose from a wide range of industries, it's a particular source of pride for our team to be honored with a spot on the National Best and Brightest Companies to Work For list," said Karrie Drobnick, Chief Marketing + Strategy Officer at Verve. "Culture is woven into every strategic decision we make. Seeing Verve named a workplace of choice not just locally, but in the nation is result of putting people at the heart of decision making, communication, hiring and development opportunities.

Companies are nominated and selected based on a lengthy self-assessment completed by the nominees and anonymous surveys sent to their team members. Verve was evaluated on a variety of categories, including: compensation, benefits/employee solutions, employee enrichment, engagement/retention, employee education/development, recruitment, selection/orientation, employee achievement/recognition, communication/shared vision, diversity/inclusion, work-life balance, community initiatives, and strategic company performance.

"Creating a best-in-class workplace requires intentional effort for us and is achieved through servant leadership culture tools, consistent and purposeful communication, leadership development, monthly one-on-one coaching and a robust wellbeing program. These and a variety of other programs and tools empower Verve team members to excel in and bring their best selves to everything they do," said Kevin J. Ralofsky, president and CEO of Verve. "It was our strong culture and engaged team members that led to the successful implementation of our recent technology upgrade to bring a new suite of tools to our members. Our team continues to refine those tools and processes to maximize our member experience and community benefits."

Demonstrating the Best and Brightest Programs' mission of "Better Business, Richer Lives, Stronger Communities," Verve is being recognized for its ongoing commitment to exhibiting sound business practices, empowering employee enrichment and positively impacting the surrounding community. In addition to offering servant leadership training and an award-winning wellness program, Verve is well known in the community for its acts of kindness known as Random Acts of Verve.

Original post:

Fox Cities Chamber: World-Class Culture Earns Verve Prestigious Workplace Recognition For Second Year In A Row - Patch.com