ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES
May 5, 2005
Effort aimed at fostering diversity in Hub CDCs
Jeremy Schwab
Community development corporations and private development companies
that build affordable housing in neighborhoods of color more often
than not are headed by whites. As in many fields, diversity tends
to be found more in lower-level positions than in upper management.
Two area groups, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation and
the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations,
aim to correct this disparity. For two years, the groups have
built a network of CDC administrators, employees of government
agencies and other community development professionals to discuss
how to open avenues for advancement of employees of color.
The MACDC and LISC call their partnership The Alliance —
Advancing Community Development by Confronting Racism. The coalition
has established a mentoring program for staff members of color
and a diversity training program for community development organizations.
Pam Jones, program officer at LISC, came up with the idea while
looking for topics for her master’s thesis. While LISC and
MACDC had worked for a decade to increase diversity in hiring
at CDCs through internships and other initiatives, Jones realized
that work needed to be done to facilitate the advancement of staff
of color into the middle and upper management levels.
“We have as a field an obligation perhaps more so than other
industries to really confront the problem of racism,” said
Jones. “We are not saying racism is any worse or better
in the community development field than any other. But we are
in the United States of America, and racism permeates our country.”
The MACDC and LISC won grants from Third Sector New England to
develop and implement their diversity training program. The training
consists of meetings with members of an organization, facilitated
by staff at MACDC or LISC, to discuss staff members’ racial
attitudes, the perceptions of racism on the part of staff of color
and strategies for making the workplace an environment where diversity
is understood and accepted.
People of color in the community development field often feel
they have to disprove the assumption that they were hired because
of their race, and are passed over for advancement sometimes because
whites in positions of authority tend to promote who they know
and associate with, according to Jones.
There are also other barriers to advancement.
“Our field has become very professional,” said Karla
Tolbert, assistant director of the Fenway Community Development
Corporation, a coalition member. “A lot of people have degrees
in urban planning. How do people step into that when they don’t
have that kind of understanding? How do we bring them up the ranks,
not just in CDCs but in community development as a whole?”
The coalition’s mentoring program is aimed at bridging some
of these social and experiential divides. It pairs promising middle
and upper-level employees of color with upper-level staff so mentees
can learn what it takes to run an organization and gain valuable
networking experience.
Mentors are from different organizations from their mentees. Currently,
there are 11 mentor/mentee pairs, but coalition members aim to
expand this number.
“We decided to start small, and have the infrastructure
necessary before we expand,” said Jones.
Coalition members hope to raise enough money to help smaller nonprofits
in the coalition to fund the continuing education of staff members
of color. Coalition leaders urge member organizations to sign
a diversity compact, through which they promise to take steps
to make their organization more welcoming to people of color and
assess their progress on an annual basis. So far, 12 organizations
have signed.
Joe Kriesberg, president of MACDC, compared the coalition’s
efforts to change the culture of organizations working in community
development with the efforts of MACDC and LISC prior to the creation
of the coalition.
“Our prior efforts were focused on bringing new people into
the field, specifically strategies to bring in individuals and
interns to CDCs,” he said. “Due to budget cuts, there
are not a lot of new opportunities, [so] we are focusing on existing
staff. We are working on how to change the field so it is a place
people of color want to work and stay.”
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