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Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR)
With YPAR, young people are the researchers and changemakers. YPAR is an innovative approach to positive youth and community development based in social justice principles. YPAR can be done anywhere where youth are, including but not limited to schools, neighborhoods, and community organizations. This approach can be useful for any young people wanting to make a difference, and is an especially powerful approach for young people who are experiencing marginalization due to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, or other forms of oppression. Hear more from the Beloved Community DRIP team about why we prioritize YPAR in our approach to research below.
Using equity to build better organizations
At Beloved Community, when we create, we do so to fill a need. In 2018, we created the Equity Audit as a tool for organizations to comprehensively assess diversity, equity, and inclusion indicators across every function of their organization’s operations. Read more from our Anti-Racism Daily post here.
Reclaiming the right to rest
At Beloved Community, we are interested in how rest makes you more compassionate and allows you to connect with people as people more deeply. What does it mean to feel rest in your body? What can rest do for the ways that you show up for yourself and others? How does it unlock your ability to dream and create with abundance? There is so much available to us if we slow our brains and bodies down.
Let’s talk about sabbatical
“We have always named the impetus for our annual sabbatical as an opportunity for collective rest. It is also a way to honor the invisible labor that women do in the workplace and in our family structures.” Hear from Beloved Community leaders Rhonda J. Broussard and Stephanie Taylor as they discuss annual sabbatical + operationalizing collective rest.
“Welcome to Beloved”
“As a new team member, I was feeling hesitant to name the conflicting event. At previous workplaces, I was not always supported in my gender identity, sexual orientation, or LGBTQ+ activism. I knew Beloved was unabashedly pro-queer, but I was allowing my previous work experiences to influence me.” Read on as Erica Badowski reflects on a time when justice + joy coexisted for them at Beloved Community.
What else is there to say?
Beloved Community joins with the family of Tyre Nichols, the city of Memphis, and communities across the nation in mourning of a beautiful Black life. We offer our deepest condolences, and express our profound grief and rage. The loss of Tyre is yet another painful reminder of the inherently violent institutions that fray and unravel our social fabric. His name brings forward memories of all the Black lives cut short by the hands of a corrosive system founded on anti-Black racism. As we mourn Tyre, we also mourn Takar Smith, Keenan Anderson and countless others who have been robbed of life and humanity. We encourage you to take care of your emotional well-being, protect yourself and loved ones right now and always. We hope the following resources will assist each of us in intentionally practicing self- and community-care.
The Value of Building Community Power Through Research
At Beloved Community, we believe that disrupting existing power structures in research requires centering the lives of those historically excluded at every stage in research design. Interrogating power dynamics in research means re-imagining the relationship between researchers and communities. Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a research framework that emphasizes ‘power with’ and shared power. PAR encourages equitable collaboration between researchers and participants and is founded on the assumption that community members most impacted by an issue are best placed to design and implement that research.
Generation Hope Expands to New Orleans
We are excited to announce that Generation Hope is bringing its life-changing Scholar Program to a new city: New Orleans.
Beloved Community is excited to announce its commitment to Generation Hope's expansion to New Orleans c/o Founder + CEO Rhonda Broussard, by way of the Highland Project's Highland Legacy Fund. Rhonda is a proud member of the inaugural Highland Leaders cohort, which represents 15 innovators from across the nation, sectors, & generations who are building their legacies for our health, planet & voice. The Highland Project is an organization focused on building and sustaining a pipeline of Black women leading communities, institutions, and systems, resulting in the creation of multi-generational wealth and change in their communities.
What We Learned: Kansas City Equity in Schools Cohort 2
After the success of our first equity in schools Kansas City cohort, and in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Beloved Community launched our second Equity in Schools (EIS) Kansas City Cohort in July of 2021. The Beloved Community Equity in Schools Cohort Model is a nine-month intensive experience where organizations participate in four components: 1) Organization-wide Equity Audit, 2) Eight intensive Capacity Building Content Sessions, and 3) Individualized Coaching, and 4) Drafting a three-year Equity Work Plan.
Black and Bilingual
Read our Beloved’s contribution to Critical Consciousness in Dual Language Bilingual Education: ‘Black and Bilingual: Challenges in Decentering Whiteness in Dual Language Bilingual Education’ by Rhonda J. Broussard, Faith R. Kares, Nicole Caridad Ralston, Maria Patrizia Santos.
A key resource for supporting student needs and transformative inquiry in the classroom, this book is ideal for graduate students, professors, leaders, educators, and other stakeholders in bilingual education and language education.