As Alexandria’s community foundation, the vision of a vibrant community is core to our work. At our IMPACT Racial Equity Forum, we asked 250 nonprofit, civic and business leaders how ACT could help them with their next steps and they said: Training for board and staff members Resources to learn more about racial equity Convening people in a safe space to have conversations to learn with and from one another Developing leaders and creating a pipeline of people to serve on boards and commissions Funding for organizations to get started or continue this work To address these needs, we are launching our Racial Equity Capacity Building Initiative. It will include: Workshops that address what it means to be an ally for racial equity and build bridges to ensure equity, opportunity and inclusion for everyone. These one-day workshops will be open to everyone in the community. A Design Lab with participants from the workshops to capture feedback about their desired continued learnings around racial equity with the goal of creating a peer cohort group to begin in October 2019. A six-month Learning Lab to equip leaders in effective racial equity implementation in their organizations. Community conversations that bring people together for dialogue to build deeper understanding and surface new ideas and solutions. Capacity-building grants that help nonprofits build know-how and knowledge about racial equity with their staff, board and constituents. Participants at the IMPACT 2019: Racial Equity Forum shared what a valuable experience the event was. “It got a lot of needed conversation and thinking in our community started. We need ACT to be a convener for more of these conversations,” said one attendee. ACT will be participating in Spring2ACTion and raising money for this initiative to ensure Alexandria is a vibrant community for all. Our goal is to raise $10,000 through Spring2ACTion and we are grateful to have a $5,000 matching grant from the Toskey Fund to help kick-off our campaign. Will you join us on this learning journey and help us continue the conversation?