Our local communities are unique. They also share similar challenges and dynamics. By joining our United Ways regionally while keeping a local focus, we can deliver far more impact than ever before.
Day 10: How Race Effects Your Health
“Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants Before participating in the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge, you may have heard about the racial wealth gap, but were you familiar…
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Day 9: Housing Inequality
Most of us can relate to the pains of rising housing costs. Would it surprise you to learn that housing affordability and who experiences homelessness is largely predicted by race? According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s March 2024 issue of The Gap, “57% of Black households are renters and 19% are extremely low-income…
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Day 8: Segregation in Michigan
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin When you hear the word segregation, what do you think of? Many of us think back to the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights Movement when you could find “Whites only” signs for restaurants,…
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Day 7: Income Inequality
“We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of public schools, and the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books.” – W.E.B. Du Bois When we think about household income, many people often think…
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Day 6: How Racism Shows Up
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Nelson Mandela We hope your…
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Day 5: What is Unearned Advantage?
“For those of us called white, whiteness simply is. Whiteness becomes, for us, the unspoken, uninterrogated norm, taken for granted, much as water can be taken for granted by a fish.” ― Tim Wise, White Like Me How do you explain what the air around you feels like on a still day? How might a…
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Day 4: Talking About Race and Racism
“Oftentimes people of color are asked to educate white people on issues that the person of color has lived with and thought about for their entire lives. That can be very psychologically and emotionally exhausting for a person to then have to care about the white person’s feelings and to take those extra efforts so…
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Day 3: Understanding and Reflecting on Bias
“Worse than being less than you, is if you are perceived as a threat”– John A. Powell, Othering & Belonging Institute, UC-Berkeley The moment we started to learn as children, our brains began to help us sort information in ways that we could easily make sense of — big and small, tall and short, soft…
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Day 2: Racial Socialization
[Overall large blue rectangle with bold text on the left that reads: “21-Day Racial Equity Challenge”, with the United Way of South Central Michigan logo above. At right are colorful interconnecting shapes.] Racial Socialization Socialization is a process we all go through – it’s how we develop values, habits, and attitudes and learn to understand…
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Kristie May’s article series exploring gun violence in Kalamazoo earns award nomination
KALAMAZOO — A powerful series of articles on gun violence has raised community awareness, prompted collaboration and earned a reporter a prestigious journalism award nomination. UWSCMI is one of six community organizations that nominated journalist Kristie May of NowKalamazoo for the Hillman Prize for Journalism. May’s year-long series, “Beyond Bullets,” explored the root causes, consequences…
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