THREADS CHALLENGE
Weaving people into the fabric of our community
In the Threads Challenge, teams of our board and staff are inviting their networks to get to know VACV + competing to see which team can bring in the most people as newsletter subscribers and/or investors!
Our goal is to gain 500 more newsletter subscribers, and raise $5000 by December 31st!
If you feel connected to our fabric and want to weave into it, we ask you to:
One of the pillars that upholds Virginia Community Voice is our belief in the power of organized people for community change.
This belief feels even more tender and true right now, with everything happening in our country and world.
Our staff and board personally know the pain of racial discrimination, environmental pollution, housing instability and exclusion of our voices in electoral politics. Working collaboratively with neighbors in South Richmond, we inform and equip people to understand root causes of injustice, so we can take clear and community-driven action.
We’re building coalitions of people across race, class, gender, religion, language and many other identities. Coalitions that are strong and adept at positive community change.
We are weaving together the fabric of a community vibrant and healthy enough to outlast us.
Today, at 5 years in, we have before us many interwoven threads of a strong community – a Steering Committee, Participatory Budgeting project, the Housing and Greening Working Group, ARCA youth program, a new Leadership Academy, and a Center for Rest & Healing in the works. A growing roster of clients participate in our Community Voice Blueprint services, so they too can engage more equitably within historically marginalized communities.
Everyday we are threading more people into our fabric, building a strong foundation for change. Yet, there are still many people in Richmond, Central Virginia, and across the state who don’t know us!
Even many of you may not know the values and principles that drive Virginia Community Voice.
We love this quote from Valerie Kaur, who says, “you are a part of me I do not yet know.”
So how do you get to know us better? Enter the THREADS CHALLENGE!
Below, we invite you to get to know us, what we stand for, and why we do what we do. Our work emanates from a deep desire for justice, shared across our board and staff. We are guided by principles and values that sustain us during challenging times. Principles and values you may also share.
Getting to Know Us: Centering Humanity, Practicing Joy
At Virginia Community Voice, we listen to our staff, RVA Thrives members, Blueprint clients, board, and broader Southside community when making decisions, rather than follow the status quo. We seek to understand the vision of people, before trying to follow the vision of institutions. **By institutions we mean government, schools, churches and faith groups, hospitals, universities, banks, corporations, etc.**
Not because the vision of institutions is bad or wrong, but many institutions in our country, and state, have been designed and led by small groups of powerful people who share similar identities and life experiences, with long histories of causing harm to minorities and other marginalized groups.
Even nonprofits and philanthropic organizations trying to “do good” still follow harmful practices rooted in colonialism and capitalism. Despite an increasingly diverse population, most nonprofits are:
white-led, adhering to white cultural norms in the workplace
defer to and elevate male leadership, particularly as organization size and budget grow
emphasize productivity and efficiency from workers
maintain power through division and control
Sadly, this often leads to burnout and high rates of turnover among staff. Until nonprofits and philanthropy heal deeper cultural wounds and practices, efforts to address gaps through DEI programs or progressive hiring practices won’t work.
That’s one of the reasons why we have tried—from the start—to create a workplace and organizational culture that goes against the grain, supporting and fostering our shared humanity.
Do we get it right every day? Certainly not. But we have leaders who are not afraid to admit mistakes, staff who give each other a lot of grace, opportunities to laugh and cry and celebrate together, and a deep shared commitment to justice.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
We put people first and invest in the health and well-being of our staff. To that end, we:
Pay 100% of the health insurance premium for staff who qualify
Follow a mental-health policy written by staff
Take quarterly rest breaks when staff engage in a healing retreat or social gathering
Offer work from home, flexible schedules, unlimited PTO, and kids always welcome!
We invite people to be their full selves at work: As a group of humans with many different intersecting identities, we make space for people to express themselves, sharing about their personal lives and lived experiences in whatever way they feel is appropriate and comfortable.
Since our founding in 2019, we’ve received so many questions about how we create a human-centered workplace that recently our Community Voice Blueprint team designed an 8-week cohort based learning opportunity on this very topic—learn more here!
We invite you to spend some time reflecting on what human centered means in your own life, workplace, or the institutions you engage with.
Some guiding questions for you:
Within my sphere of influence, how can I act in ways that are more centered around our shared humanity?
How might I make space for people to be their full selves in my workplace, school, home, or faith group?
How do I practice joy? How can I support others in practicing joy?
We balance accountability & trust:
Recently we engaged in team and organization-wide discussions about accountability and trust, asking each team to define what they need to feel emotionally, and physically safe in the workplace and develop norms to support each other’s safety. We also created organizational norms that define how we communicate, resolve conflict, stay present in a remote / virtual work environment, and respect privacy including that of community members. All staff were involved in creating these norms and had several opportunities to revise them before signing.
We practice JOY:
Yep, you heard it. We’re not afraid of it! At every staff meeting, we are invited to share our work-related updates, and one thing that is bringing us joy that week. To quote Valarie Kaur again, “Joy will power your courage.” As people fighting for liberation, we have learned that we must breathe in equal measure to the pushing, and be joyful in equal measure to the grief, if we are to sustain ourselves in this work.
Getting to Know Us: Centering Community
Since we started RVA Thrives in 2017, we have been committed to centering the expertise and experience of the neighbors directly impacted by our work. This includes any resident in South Richmond, with a specific focus on 10 neighborhoods along the Richmond Highway Corridor, from the James River down to Walmsley Boulevard.
How do we define Community? There are about 19,000 people living in this part of Richmond, and we estimate that the work we do with a core group of 150 neighbors has a ripple effect across the community, benefiting thousands of others. Since the 1950s, the Southside has been a predominantly Black community, however in recent years, the Black population has started to decline, as more white residents have moved to the Southside. Over the past 20 years the Hispanic population has grown, and yet we believe current census data actually undercounts the true size of the Latine population here. Our focus is on people whose voices have historically been marginalized, underrepresented in politics, and excluded from decision-making. In Virginia the voices that have been legally and culturally excluded from public decision-making are those of minority groups, namely Black, Indigenous and other people of color, immigrant and LGBTQIA groups, etc., while the voices of white residents and communities have been centered.
That’s why, in our work in South Richmond we center and amplify the voices of minority groups, with a focus on Black and Latine neighbors, listening to their stories, perspectives and experiences.
How do we remain true to our value of being community-centered?
Prioritize Shared Interests: Yes, there are outstanding individual leaders in South Richmond, and we seek out people with a discernible following to join RVA Thrives. But, we don’t need a heroic individual to save a community, because everyone has superpowers needed in this fight. Our practice is to listen to individuals, identify common themes and issues, and connect groups of people around those common issues. From there, we build out solutions and take collective action in ways that represent the vision and voice of all involved. We think this method works so well we wrote a guide to it! Check out our Community Voice Blueprint guide to equitable engagement here.
Community-driven Fundraising: Even when it comes to resource development, we have made it clear that our priority will always be the community, a shift from the traditional “donor-centric” fundraising model. Our Courageous Fundraising Principles explain why, and are a statement of how we honor all investments in our work equally – including time and money.
Advocate for Community Vision in Decision-Making: In advocacy campaigns around housing affordability we want the concerns of local residents to be weighed equally alongside the concerns of political leaders and commercial developers. In fact, we created a tool to make it easier for neighbors to communicate their vision for development projects with decision-makers, called the Equitable Development Scorecard. When we push for inclusion of neighbor voice in decision making about the built and natural environment, we are repairing decision-making practices here in Virginia over the past 400+ years that excluded Black, Latine and other people of color and marginalized groups.
We invite you to spend some time with these resources, reflecting on what community-centric means in your own life, workplace, or the institutions you engage with.
Some guiding questions for you:
Whose voice and vision tends to be centered in the groups you’re a part of? Why, and to what end? What keeps that from changing?
What makes you feel like you belong in the groups you’re part of? Do you feel like your voice is heard?
What changes would you like to see within the groups you’re part of, so that they are more community-centric?