Category Archives: Intentional Communities

Key quality and savings metrics as measured within the most recent performance period from The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) for the Oncology Care Model (OCM) demonstrated Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute as a top performing oncology practice nationwide.

Fort Myers, Florida Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS) reported key quality and savings metrics, as measured within the most recent performance period from The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) for the Oncology Care Model (OCM), with Medicare savings of approximately $31.7 million over the last 6-month performance period and more than $140 million in total savings since the OCM launched in 2016.

In this most recent feedback report issued by CMMI, the number of inpatient hospital admissions for FCS was 8% lower than other OCM practices, and the number of emergency room visits not leading to admission was 21% lower than other OCM practices in the same patient risk quartile.

At the same time, FCS has demonstrated value-based outcomes and episode-based payment initiatives partnering with commercial payers, Accountable Care Organizations, and Medicaid-Managed Care Organizations in markets across the state.

Our value-based practice initiatives at FCS are programmatic, intentional and thoughtfully designed to be organized squarely around the patient, yielding consistent results that outpace industry benchmarks and made good on our commitment to prioritize patient outcomes and quality, stated FCS chief executive officer Nathan H. Walcker. I could not be prouder of our entire team and their steadfast commitment to delivering value-based oncology care in communities across our great state of Florida.

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Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute Ranked Among Top Performing Oncology Practices in the Country for Quality, Cost Saving Measures -...

Northern Michigan University graduating senior Lynda Lyndie Unterkircher of Sturgis finds herself in a position she never could have predicted when she first arrived on campus. The first-generation college student and self-described quiet person is the newly selected student speaker for NMU's Dec. 11 commencement. Her decision to apply for the honor is emblematic of her Northern experience, which has been defined by opportunities to push herself beyond her comfort zone and achieve personal growth.

This was something I never thought I would do, but I completed the application and submitted a video of my speech, she said. During my time at Northern, I have tried to take as many risks as I could. Each one has turned out as either a great additional memory or a moment of growth. The Student Leader Fellowship Program is a big reason for that because it involves a lot of communication, teamwork and leadership. I'm just getting myself out there more and letting my voice be heard.

Unterkircher will earn her bachelor's degree in biology with a concentration in physiology. She said her speech to fellow graduates will revolve around three themes: slow down; be intentional; and lead with love.

One of the things I live by is intention versus impact. The best intentions don't always lead to a positive impact, so it's important to consider the outcomes of our actions before we take them. And love can look different for everyone. We know bad actions can be made out of love, but so can revolution. It's important to be intentional about our approach so that it's with compassion and love for others.

As an Early Middle College participant in her hometown, Unterkircher earned both her high school diploma and an associate degree in science. She transferred to Northern, where both her academics and involvement in activities intensified.

I came up here for a visit and fell in love with the area. Everyone in Marquette is so inviting. I liked Northern's smaller size. Interacting one on one with professors is especially important in the sciences.

Unterkircher was on the Hunt Hall government and a member of the Pre-Med Club, Feminism for All, Superior Edge and Mortar Board. She served as social media chair and as a member of the selection and recruitment committee for the Student Leader Fellowship Program. Her required SLFP community service internship was directing events and communications for the Mind Your Health student organization, which works with administration to provide and promote mental health resources.

Her SLFP mentor, social work professor Sarah Carlson, helped Unterkircher secure an internship as a victim's advocate at the Delta Regional Child Advocacy Center. NMU's Social Work Department and the Center for Native American Studies, in conjunction with the Walking the Path Together project, connects interested students with rural tribal communities for internship placements.

Energized by that experience, Unterkircher is planning to pursue a master's degree in social work following a post-graduation gap year, then might revisit her original plan of going to medical school.

NMU's in-person commencement begins at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 10, in the Superior Dome. The ceremony will be live streamed on http://www.nmu.edu/commencement and broadcast on WNMU-TV.

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Student Commencement Speaker Selected | Northern Today - Northern Today

The University of South Florida generates an annual economic impact of $6.02 billion, according to a new report that analyzes the universitys role in serving as a catalyst for growth in the Tampa Bay region and state of Florida. The study provides an in-depth look in real-dollar terms at USFs impact across the full scope of the university.

Among the key takeaways, which are based on fiscal year 2019-20 data:

USF President Rhea Law says the study reaffirms the value of the work being done by students, faculty, staff and alumni.

As a major research university that shares a symbiotic relationship with a growing urban region, the University of South Florida is a powerful engine of prosperity, Law said. By graduating students who are career-ready, generating knowledge that addresses our most pressing issues and fostering more inclusive communities, USF contributes greatly to the vitality and vibrancy of our region and state.

The report highlights USFs position as a leader in meeting workforce needs and preparing students for career success through its nearly 250 degrees programs. The study details USFs social impact by creating opportunities for a population that includes approximately 25% of students who are first in their families to go to college and 40% of students who are eligible for a Pell grant, which is awarded to undergraduates from lower-income families. USFs research enterprise is also featured, including more than 2,400 U.S. patents held by faculty, students, staff and alumni that can help address complex challenges facing society and lead to new startup companies.

In this report, the breadth and depth of USFs economic impact can be seen in all aspects of the universitys operations from the students it educates, to the faculty and professional staff it employs, to the talented professional and entrepreneurs who power a modern innovation economy, to the construction projects that shaped the campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee, the executive summary notes.

The study, which was compiled by a team of faculty and students from the Muma College of Business, is available here. An interactive website that tells more of the stories of how USF makes an impact and creates opportunities can be viewed here.

What others are saying about USFs impact:

J.P. DuBuque, president and CEO of the Greater St. Petersburg Area Economic Development Corporation: USF is uniquely positioned to address some of the main challenges facing our communities, including the need for more collaboration across the Tampa Bay region to attract new businesses and the growing demand to produce a more skilled workforce. With three campuses spread over multiple counties, USF is poised to take an active role in tackling these issues by helping local leaders think more regionally and pushing the envelope to offer programs tailored to employer needs. In St. Petersburg, USFs programs line up well with our Grow Smarter industries of marine and life sciences, financial services, data analytics, specialized manufacturing, and creative art and design. Through USFs focus on innovation, the university also strengthens and influences other organizations like the St. Pete Innovation District and the Tampa Bay Innovation Center, which support entrepreneurship and job creation.

Sharon Hillstrom, president and CEO of the Bradenton Area Economic Development Corp: "The University of South Florida is a major community asset in attracting and retaining companies and talent to Manatee County. The USF Sarasota-Manatee campus leadership is focused on tailoring programs to address workforce development needs of the regions employers in areas such as hospitality, insurance, healthcare, entrepreneurship and more.

Lisa Krouse, CEO of the Sarasota County Economic Development Corporation: USF has been instrumental in producing talent throughout various industry sectors from financial, accounting, insurance, hospitality, nursing and others. USF plays a vital role in producing strong talent for our local economy. Their business partnerships thrive because it has contributed to the incredible success that has been seen by businesses in our community. The university has had an especially big role in diversifying our economy with its intentional focus on partnering with businesses and paying close attention to our local labor needs. Working together with the community, USF has provided trained professionals in nursing as well as other industry sectors, which has been a huge driver for our economy. Their production of local talent cant be understated.

Craig Richard, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council: Technology has long been a target industry of the Tampa Bay EDC, but over the past few years weve seen a steady increase in interest from tech CEOs, particularly in the sectors of cybersecurity, fintech and health tech, who are discovering that Tampa is an ideal place to grow their companies. Access to a highly skilled pool of talent, fueled by USFs strong pipeline of diverse technical talent, is the leading factor attracting tech CEOs and companies to our area.

Bemetra Simmons, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Partnership: The University of South Florida is a major economic driver for the entire Tampa Bay region, producing a pipeline of talent for our workforce and impacting innovation through research and technology licensing. In 2017, we partnered with the USF Muma College of Business to launch the State of the Region initiative. Together, we produce the annual State of the Region community event and a collection of complementary research projects to help our community leaders understand Tampa Bays strengths and weaknesses, how we compare to communities across the country, and whats needed to move the needle on our greatest challenges.

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New study finds USF's economic impact rises to more than $6 billion annually - University of South Florida

Two proposed congressional district maps one formally released by House Republicans, one leaked from the Senate are now public in Pennsylvania.

Both would likely be better for Republican candidates than the current, court-drawn map is, but lawmakers say neither will be their final draft.

The House map was drawn by a non-lawmaker: Lehigh County piano teacher Amanda Holt. She rose to Pennsylvania mapping prominence in 2012, when the state Supreme Court cited her analysis in its decision to reject the state Senate map Republicans had drawn the previous year.

Her proposal appears to prioritize two criteria: minimizing splits to voting precincts and municipalities, and keeping district sizes equivalent.

Lehigh County piano teacher Amanda Holts proposed congressional district map.

The result is a map that creates seven districts likely to be safe for Republicans, and five likely to be safe for Democrats. Of the remaining five swing districts, two favor Republicans and three favor Democrats.

It would create a generally more favorable playing field for Republicans than the current map, which features seven safe GOP districts and an additional GOP swing, and six safe Democratic districts and an additional four swing districts that favor Democrats. Pennsylvania lost one congressional seat following the 2020 census due to population shifts.

Advocates have long asked for political maps across the country to be more proportional, meaning whoever is elected to office is as representative of the group of people who chose them as possible.

Daves Redistricting App, a nonpartisan website that produces analyses of political map data, reviewed Holts map using that criteria and found it to be anti-majoritarian on the whole.

Even though they [would] probably receive roughly 52.46% of the total votes, Democrats [would] likely only win 47.44% of the [Congressional] seats, the analysis said.

It also showed Holts map to be significantly less compact than the 2018 map, meaning that fewer people in a given district live near each other on average, and though two districts would represent more voters of color than white voters, those voters are not as well-represented under Holts proposal overall.

In testimony she made to the House in July, Holt, a Republican who used to serve as a Lehigh County Commissioner, noted that she draws maps with the belief that they should have clear standards. Equal population and avoiding splits, she said, are things that can be easily fact checked and are clear and measurable.

Fair map advocates have raised their eyebrows at the Houses choice.

That one map was chosen from submitted maps without any clarification of what the rationale was, said Carol Kuniholm, who heads group Fair Districts PA. So when we look at the map that was selected we would not we would not consider it the best of the maps that were submitted.

The Holt map, she said, appears to be playing Tetris to allow for no population deviation and few municipal splits. As a result, she notes, it includes strange contortions in Dauphin County, around Harrisburg, and divides up Chester County in ways she worries dont reflect the concerns of the people in those communities.

There were maps that certainly would have done a better job addressing that, she said.

David Thornburgh, who heads the good government group Committee of Seventy, noted that Pennsylvanias political geography Democrats packed into cities and Republicans spread thinly across wide areas makes it difficult to draw maps that accurately reflect the states Democratic registration advantage.

It might be hard to do a lot better given the way the political geography of Pennsylvania works out, he said of making the map responsive to voters desires. But you want as many districts as possible to be in fair play for both political parties. We dont want to lock in partisan advantage for the next 10 years.

The Committee of Seventys Draw the Lines PA project drew its own composite congressional map based on the work of more than 7,000 people, each of whom competed in map-drawing competitions the project held over the last few years. An analysis of that map shows that like the Holt proposal, it would create five seats safe for Democrats and seven safe for Republicans, but that Democrats would have at least a slight advantage in all five of the remaining competitive districts.

House State Government Committee Chair Seth Grove (R-York), who is largely in charge of the drawing effort in his caucus, said in a statement Wednesday that the committee chose Holts map for being free of political influence, and for the ways in which it split up the states population.

The introduction of this map is a starting point, and we look forward to hearing the thoughts of residents across Pennsylvania about how this map would impact their community and how they are represented in Washington, D.C., Grove said.

Rep. Scott Conklin (D-Centre), the Democratic chair of that committee, said hes disappointed in the choice of Holts map over the 18 others that were submitted, though hes hoping for a chance to negotiate changes before the map arrives on Democratic Gov. Tom Wolfs desk. Conklin added the map was chosen without the involvement of Democrats, despite assurances to the contrary.

When somebody says theyre going to be transparent and open, I expect them to be transparent and open, he said. This is politics. Thats what theyre playing here.

An unfinished negotiation

The Senate map that became public late Wednesday, meanwhile, was less of an intentional statement of values than a snapshot of an unfinished negotiation.

The Senates proposed congressional district map, that became public late Wednesday.

The map, circulated online in PDF form, notably appears to draw Congressman Brendan Boyle (D-02) out of his district though that wouldnt preclude him from running for it and to draw State Sen. Sharif Street (D-Philadelphia), into it. Street, who chairs the state Democratic Party, is the ranking Democrat on the Senate State Government Committee and has been heavily involved in a bipartisan negotiation on the map.

In addition, the proposal creates a gnarled second Pittsburgh-area district, trading the current purplish suburban Allegheny County seat held by Democrat Conor Lamb, who is running for Senate for a convoluted, more GOP-friendly district that runs through Beaver, Allegheny, Butler, Armstrong, and Indiana Counties.

It also carves Harrisburg out of the rest of Central Pennsylvania, lumping it into a district that stretches all the way to the New York border.

Street stresses that map is a draft a snapshot of the negotiation process. He says the twisty 17th District, for instance, looks like that because a GOP staffer dropped in the 16th District from the Holt map, and was trying to adjust surrounding districts to fit. They hadnt finished finessing it when the map was leaked.

Street does defend several aspects of the draft. He says it re-distributes voters in the Philly suburbs in a way that makes one of the Democratic members there, Chrissy Houlahan (D-06), safer, while not giving any nearby Democrats prohibitively competitive districts.

Of the decision to draw Boyle out of his district and give himself a path to run there, Street acknowledged, Im not upset about that. He notes that the map Fair Districts PA submitted did something similar to Boyles district.

Sen. Dave Argall (R-Schuylkill), the GOP chair of his chambers State Government Committee, declined to discuss the maps specifics, or give a concrete timeline for a final proposal.

Its still very fluid, he said. We had an agreement today and it could blow up in five minutes.

The map was widely derided by Democrats on social media, but got qualified support from at least one prominent member of the party: Sen. Jay Costa (D-Allegheny), the chambers minority leader.

I want to thank Senator Street for getting the process of congressional maps started, and doing so in a bipartisan fashion, Costa said in a statement. The proposed map he has put forth with Senator Argall starts our conversation over here in the Senate, and Im pleased to see that it protects the Voting Rights Act.

More time for public comment

Heading into this once-a-decade mapping process, lawmakers had promised more transparency than in previous years notoriously secretive efforts despite the fact they are not required to incorporate feedback from the public.

Both chambers say they intend to hold hearings on draft maps before attempting to pass a final proposal. The House has scheduled an informational hearing on Holts map for Thursday evening and a vote on the proposal for 8 a.m. Monday.

In the meantime, lawmakers are inviting the public to give their thoughts on the map. Argall says the Senate doesnt yet have a timeline for releasing its own draft, though Democrats indicated a committee vote on it could come next month.

Congressional maps must be passed by both the House and Senate, then signed by Wolf. If they cant come to a consensus, the state Supreme Court, currently controlled by Democrats, may have to intervene and draw a map itself.

The Legislative Reapportionment Commission, a separate five-member body thats in charge of producing state House and Senate maps, has yet to publicly introduce its proposals for either.

The Department of State has said lawmakers should finalize maps by Jan. 24 to allow enough time to circulate nominating petitions ahead of the May primary election.

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Pa. congressional map drafts are out. They're good news for the GOP and some incumbents - 90.5 WESA

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It's been five years. Where are the weed lounges voters wanted?

The Lowell Cafe in West Hollywood, CaliforniaAmericas first cannabis restauranton September 30, 2019, a day before its official opening. Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

It should come as no surprise to regularBoston readers that while this city has plenty of fun things to do, and is in many respects getting more fun, we are still far behind where we ought to be on several key components of fun-ness.

One of the most obvious and persistently frustrating examples of this phenomenon is the states slow-walking of cannabis legalization, which became law a whopping half decade ago. After all that time, many dispensaries have opened their doorsright now, were approaching 200 stores statewide. Still, we have only just this year allowed marijuana delivery companies to get up and running (albeit with onerous regulations). And there are still not nearly as many pot shops in Greater Boston as you might expect for a city of this size.

But what has really started to grind my gears lately is the lack of another aspect of the cannabis industry that we still, after all this time, have yet to usher into existence: cannabis cafs. That is, public places where consenting adults can consume marijuana products of all kinds together, safely and legally, and without bothering anyone else.

I couldnt help but notice that Apex Noire, the multi-level dispensary-slash-cocktail lounge concept set to open near Faneuil Hall sometime next year, would have been a perfect candidate for such a space, but sadly no one will be allowed to consume THC there legally.

So what gives? Where are the weed lounges, THC-enhanced yoga classes, pot-infused movie theater concessions, and Amsterdam-style coffee shops we were promised? What, in other words, has taken us so long?

It wasnt supposed to be this way. Backers of the 2016 pro-legalization ballot question in the state meant for the new law to include cannabis cafs. So did the lawmakers who tweaked the law in 2017. It wasnt until Secretary of State Bill Galvin concluded in 2018 that the law was flawed that the trouble really began. His office found that there was no legal way for communities to do what the law called for, which was to let voters decide whether to opt in to so-called social consumption sites. There is some controversy surrounding this, but it is what it is.

The state is ready to go. The Cannabis Control Commission in 2019 approved a pilot program that would allow a handful of towns to open cannabis lounges, study how things go, and in the process work out regulations for how these places will operate going forward. Even Charlie Baker is on board.

All that remains, it seems, is the need to patch up the existing law at the state house. House and Senate bills have been filed that would do so, and they were discussed at a hearing earlier this month, but the issue is just one of many marijuana-related concerns state legislators have to contend with right nowalong with, most notably, the debate over how to fix so-called host community agreements.

I reached out to Julian Cyr, a state senator from the Cape who filed one of them. When I complained to him that this felt like the state clumsily getting in the way of progress yet again, he pushed back a bit.

We worked to create a pathway, right? We were creative and intentional about the law that we passed in 2017. And we put a lot of effort into having strong equity components and to have a pathway to do social consumption, he says. This is more a case of being like, Oh, this isnt playing out how we intended. So weve got to go back and fix it.'

Cyr agrees that the situation is frustrating, because the potential is so obvious. Think, he says, of all the visitors who flock to P-town in the summer and happily file into the local dispensary to stock up on pre-rolled joints or THC sodas only to find there is technically nowhere to enjoy them legally. So people end up lighting up on the street, or on the beach.

I spend a lot of time on Commercial Street, and you can definitely smell marijuana from time to time, Cyr says. I think that social consumption venues will do a good job of addressing nuisance issues and also a better job of promoting public health than having the police tasked with trying to adjudicate this, and trying to ticket people for it. It just doesnt make good sense.

What makes the delay even more frustrating is that acceptance of cannabis use right now is higher than ever.

I would say from talking to state elected officials frequently that theyre pretty informed on cannabis issues, says Shaleen Title, the former Massachusetts cannabis commissioner who has written extensively about social equity issues with legalization in the state. And I feel confident that if it was voted on, this would pass in a second. Its just that no cannabis bills have been voted on [since 2017]. So I think its the leadership thats the problem.

Longer-term, even if the state does get its act together and fix the law, no one can say for certain what these social consumption lounges will actually be like. The debate overthat is just beginning.In an effort to nudge this process along, and to help inform the coming regulations, a new group called the Massachusetts Social Consumption Advancement Coalition is taking shape, and held its first meeting earlier this month. Its founder, cannabis consultant Mike Brais, tells me the industry is concerned about proposed rules that would, for example, limit the size of doses cafs would be allowed to sell, allow sales only of edible products, or ban smoking marijuana flowerwhich he says would limit the appeal of social consumption sites before they even got started. So stay tuned on that.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts is getting lapped. Just look at all the fun our counterparts are having in states like California, where cannabis cafes are thriving.

And you actually dont need to go to the west coast to see social consumption in action. If youre curious, you can always join the Summit Lounge in Worcester, which gets around the state rules by operating as a private club and letting members light up their own weed inside if they choose to do so. Not a cannabis caf, per se, but its getting there.

For now though, the cannabis industry has clearly had its wings clipped. And, as Brais tells me, its kept people from taking this burgeoning industry to the next level and doing what the law intended: letting people whove been persecuted for decades finally run small businesses that celebrate cannabis culture, fully legally.

This could be a nice marketing mechanism for organizations, with a really low cost of entry, like running a bar, thats accessible to locals, he says. Offering somebody a place that they can go where they can buy their cannabis and they can consume their cannabis in a one stop shop, it just makes all the sense in the world.

Doesnt it?

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Why Boston Can't Have Nice Things, Part One Million: Cannabis Cafs - Boston magazine

Small and medium-size churches can navigate the challenges of postmodern culture and the COVID-19 pandemic by capitalizing on inherent strengths, embracing the neighborhoods that surround them and by adopting scaled-down practices from megachurches, one of the nations leading religion researchers said during a Dec. 9 webinar hosted by Baptist News Global.

And American congregations, big or small, must be open to new ways of cultivating leadership and of welcoming the ethnic, racial and sexual diversity long accepted by younger generations, said Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford International University. He was the guest on BNGs Dec. 9 webinar with Executive Director Mark Wingfield.

Diversity is increasing, and if congregations put their heads in the sand and turn a blind eye to this, they are going to remain the most segregated places on Sunday mornings, Thumma said.

Thumma is a sociologist of religion and a veteran in the field of religion research with expertise in the megachurch movement, evangelicalism, LGBTQ faith and changes in American religious life, among others. He is a leader in the Faith Communities Today national research project and is the co-author of The Other 80 Percent, Beyond Megachurch Myths and Gay Religion.

During the hour-long Zoom and livestreamed session, Thumma also addressed questions about the pandemics lasting impact on congregational attendance and finances, how clergy have been challenged by major shifts in society and church, and the struggles of denominations to serve both the small and megachurches in their jurisdictions.

He agreed with Wingfields assessment that American church life is divided between the haves and the have-nots in terms of attendance, money and other resources.

It is stark in the religious landscape when only 10% of all the congregations in the country have the vast majority of people, and the median-size congregation is 65 attendees or less, Thumma said. And that group has only 15% of all people who go to churches.

He added that 35,000 of the approximately 350,000 congregations in the United States account for 60% of overall church attendance. Thats a really skewed graphic. Theres a vast number of small churches with almost no one in them and a relatively small percentage, and number, of congregations with the largest percent.

This stark divide presents challenges for denominational officials and denominations themselves because the normal models of democratic representation skew toward the influence of the many small churches, which is not where the majority of churchgoers attend.

This tale of two kinds of churches also may be seen in response to the pandemic, Thumma said, noting that although deeper research into the pandemics effect on churches is forthcoming, its already obvious that congregations with more resources generally had an easier time of it than those with fewer resources.

The congregations that went into the pandemic with ample resources and ready-made technology were able to weather it quite well as opposed a lot of the smaller congregations that struggled to figure out how to get on Zoom or do livestreaming, he explained.

The congregations that went into the pandemic with ample resources and ready-made technology were able to weather it quite well.

But the picture isnt an entirely gloomy one for smaller churches, he added. Thereare some advantages to being small. Those advantages include closer and often deeper relationships.

Wingfield said he was stunned to learn that one of those advantages during the pandemic turned out to be financial. Again, data from Hartford and other sources show that churches that fare well financially during the pandemic have done very well and those that have fare poorly have been hit especially hard.

The upside of this phenomenon the fact that most U.S. congregations have survived so far financially may be explained by the fact that Americans are incredibly generous in a crisis and because disposable income increased for those still working but unable to dine out or take trips in 2020, Thumma said.

This is one place small and medium-size congregations may find an advantage over larger congregations, if those larger churches lose the personal touch of things like small groups, he indicated. One of the things that comes across clearly in our Faith Communities Today research is that the larger the congregation gets, the less per capita giving it has, the less likely those people are to volunteer, to be fully engaged, because a large group doesnt put the same kind of pressure on to be fully committed and to be fully involved as a small group.

Part of the reason the current generation of megachurches has been so successful is by avoiding the construction of ever-larger buildings and instead creating small groups and satellite congregations in an effort to foster intimacy, which in some sense replicates the small-church experience.

To survive and thrive, small congregations must recognize they already possess the qualities of intimacy and flexibility desired by big churches, he said. They can then seek to replicate the creativity in ministry that megachurches often exhibit.

I think there is hope for revitalizing small churches and capitalizing on what they do well, which is create intimacy and also a significant level of commitment, Thumma said.

And it is possible for small and medium-size churches to emulate some of the practices megachurches learned from from Disney, Walmart, shopping malls and other institutions, he explained. There was a lot of borrowing in those early days. The megachurches didnt invent all this stuff.

As an example, Thumma suggested smaller congregations might also benefit from using multiple large screens in their sanctuaries to help worshipers feel more involved in worship. If congregations were more intentional about such practices Im sure they would thrive a good bit more.

Megachurches also should be emulated in the way they develop leadership, Thumma explained. Large congregations have become known for cultivating leaders from within their ranks instead of routinely bringing in outside clergy, and also for not pigeon-holing candidates into one kind of ministry.

What we see in a lot of megachurches is that they are not looking for people for specific roles, but for leadership qualities and potential that can be used in various ministries, he said.

This has been especially helpful in creating ethnic diversity in congregations, Thumma said. Rather than trying to fill allotted places to create diversity, megachurches find ways to identify natural leaders in the congregation and then create explicit pathways to leadership that cut across the different racial groups.

This is one of the drivers behind Hartford data that show that in a quarter of all congregations, at least 20% of members are not part of the dominant race of those fellowships and that 10% of congregations are so diverse that there is no majority racial or ethnic group.

Two or three decades ago, Thumma documented the barriers to inclusion facing the LGBTQ community. And even though the majority of U.S. congregations are neither welcoming nor affirming of gay, lesbian and transgender members, the number of congregations that are now welcoming is notable.

Thumma said if someone had asked him 20 or 30 years ago what the landscape would be like today, he would not have predicted the sea change that has happened in American culture, politics and religious life.

Part of the struggle were seeing is that the culture and the younger generations have far outpaced the vast majority of congregations and people and laws.

Part of the struggle were seeing is that the culture and the younger generations have far outpaced the vast majority of congregations and people and laws, he said. So, there is a disconnect there.

Current research shows that the vast majority of Americans under age 35 support LGBTQ rights and inclusion, he said. It will take time and generational change for the rest of the church to reflect that trend, but the change is inevitable.

Prior to the pandemic, pastors faced daunting challenges of adapting to cultural and organizational change. The rapid adaptation required by COVID, mixed with the nations fraught political landscape, has escalated reports of clergy burnout and resignations.

Yet while the reports of a larger-than-usual number of clergy leaving their posts are true, thats still descriptive of only a small percentage of U.S. clergy, Thumma said, echoing an earlier point he made about how some pastors and denominational officials and even church consultants are prone to generalize what they are seeing, even if their personal dataset is not the same as a national sample.

National research has confirmed the challenges ministers have faced from culture and the coronavirus, Thumma said. Clergy have noticed for the past 20 years, and especially the last 10 years, that their old, tried-and-true methods dont work so well as the world has changed around them. Throw in in the pandemic, and that is a whole new component.

But Americas clergy are far from being beaten, he added. Clergy were asked in a recent Hartford survey if 2020 was the hardest ministry year they had ever experienced. Two-thirds said it was.

But when we asked them if they were considering leaving (ministry), 80% said they never thought that during the worst year of their ministry.

But when we asked them if they were considering leaving (ministry), 80% said they never thought that during the worst year of their ministry, Thumma said. Only 37% confirmed that thought crossed their minds, and only 8% said they seriously considered quitting.

I understand there is going to be some churn, and like every profession people are saying I want to reconsider this. But I am not seeing more than 10% seriously thinking of abandoning their callings, Thumma said.

But those who stay will have their work cut out for them, especially as the long-term effects of the pandemic on membership and attendance become more apparent, he quickly added. Its clear from the data that congregations are not back to where they were in 2019 in terms of attendance, including some that are 20% to 40% below previous levels.

Still unknown is whether those who began attending church online during the pandemic will return to physical activities, and how congregations can more fully relate with those who dont return.

The challenge is this, he said: How are they going to connect with their virtual folks to make them truly members, not just spectators?

Related articles:

Largest-ever U.S. congregational survey confirms what church consultants have been telling you

Most comprehensive study yet of COVIDs impact on churches finds uneven results

Read more from the original source:

In a world of haves and have-nots, America's churches should capitalize on their strengths, religion researcher says - Baptist News Global

Navajo Nation

One who has a masters degree in linguistics has made green energy a crusade on a reservation where coal, gas, and uranium have reigned supreme for decades, leaving tainted groundwater in their wake.

Another returned to the Navajo reservation from Chicago to find that fracking had marred large sections of her native land something she now works to stop in one of the largest methane hot spots in the United States.

A third was so distraught by the lack of ballot access on the reservation that she organized getting voters to the polls on horseback her version of saddle-up democracy.

Their people have suffered brutally, but these women are determined to ensure that history does not define their future. Meet five rising stars of Navajo Nation.

Two others have immersed themselves in politics directly one as the youngest member of the Arizona State Legislature and the other as one of three women on the 24-member Navajo Nation Council.

All are part of a rising tide of activist women on the nations largest reservation who are making a mark on everything from energy policy to the democratic process. Their voices echo in state capitols and corporate boardrooms across the American Southwest, trying to change business as usual within and outside the reservation.

Their efforts come at a particularly fraught time. Last year, from the vermilion sands bordering the Grand Canyon to the oil-rich scrublands east of Chaco Canyon, the Navajo Nation was hit by a perfect storm a convergence of soaring pandemic deaths, dwindling energy revenues, and rising unemployment. Amid the chaos, Native women stepped up in what some see as an unprecedented wave. While one COVID-19 relief group raised $18 million in a matter of months, other women redoubled efforts to dismantle policies that have left Navajo (Din) people vulnerable.

I think that youre actually seeing a return to the way that Din society has always been, says Nicole Horseherder, executive director of T Nizhn n (Sacred Water Speaks), an organization pushing for new energy policies and water protection across the Navajo Nation. Women are coming forward and saying, I am a leader too. I can make these decisions. I can make better decisions.

Some of the women, while taking controversial stands, have been motivated by deprivations theyve seen on the reservation. Others are concerned about the damage being done to tribal lands from developers spades and drills. But underneath all the narratives is another factor the dominant presence of women in Navajo society, where taking charge is rooted in a matrilineal culture.

When you see the destruction in your community, you realize you have to do something, says Wendy Greyeyes, assistant professor of Native American studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. So, women are empowered. A lot of that harks back to our own creation stories. Changing Woman was a very powerful deity who reflected thinking about the longevity of our existence, of the Din people. This ideology is baked into our DNA as Navajo women our need to care and nurture and protect our communities, our families.

Five female leaders recently met with the Monitor to talk about their journeys and visions for new beginnings within the Navajo reservation, a land larger than West Virginia that extends across three Southwestern states and is home to 170,000 tribal members.

Fajada Butte looms at Chaco Culture National Historical Park, which is surrounded by Navajo lands in northwest New Mexico.

Ayear ago, on a chilly December morning, Nicole Horseherder marked an explosive turning point in her long battle against coal mining. Standing on a slope overlooking the towering smokestacks of the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona, Ms. Horseherder set her cellphone on livestream and gazed at the 775-foot monoliths glowing in the sunrise a mile away.

The stacks had been a landmark of the high desert for nearly half a century, symbols of fleeting prosperity and persistent pollution. The power plant serviced major cities of the Southwest and ran the huge Colorado River pumps supplying much of their water, but was among the top 10 carbon emitters in the United States. At precisely 8:30 a.m., a thunderous rumble shattered the clear morning and clouds of smoke mushroomed as 1,500 pounds of dynamite collapsed the stacks. In the aftermath, an eerie silence gripped the crowd around Ms. Horseherder, followed by cheers of celebration from a handful of her fellow activists.

Ms. Horseherder had fought to close the power plant for years, though this moment was more a result of market forces than political pressure. When I caught up with her last August on the Second Mesa of the Hopi reservation deep within the encircling borders of the Navajo reservation, she recalled her journeys start. Driving to an overlook, she pointed north toward distant Big Mountain. For her, it stirred painful memories.

Ownership of the hardscrabble land surrounding Big Mountain, called Black Mesa, had long been an unresolved intertribal treaty issue. It remained in limbo until the 1950s and 60s, when a Utah lawyer named John Boyden persuaded a minority of Hopi litigants to take it to court.

True to its name, Black Mesa is underlain by rich coal seams. It is also sacred to the Navajos and Hopis, many of whom opposed outsiders tapping their minerals. But the lawsuit prevailed, eventually forcing the removal of some 10,000 Navajo residents while dividing mineral rights equally between the tribes. Boyden subsequently leased land and mineral rights for Peabody coal company. A half-century of coal mining and environmental controversy ensued.

Ms. Horseherders epiphany came when she returned home from Vancouver, British Columbia, with a masters degree in the 1990s and discovered that her dream of leading a pastoral life had turned to dust. The springs that her familys livestock depended on had run dry. My whole attention and focus shifted, says Ms. Horseherder. It became, How am I going to protect the place where I live how am I going to bring the water back? And where did the water go in the first place?

Ms. Horseherder became a vocal activist and founded T Nizhn n, or Sacred Water Speaks. At the time, Peabody was pumping billions of gallons of water from deep aquifers, mixing it with pulverized coal, and sending the slurry through 273 miles of pipeline to a Nevada power plant. It assured tribal officials that the technology was safe, and many supported the operation because coal mining was a pillar of the Navajo and Hopi economies for nearly 50 years, providing tax revenues and well-paying jobs.

But environmentalists contended that depressurizing the aquifer was lowering the water table. While Ms. Horseherder fought Peabody for years and others lost scores of animals to stock ponds they said were tainted by slurry the power plant and related activities were only closed when the economics of the operations no longer worked. Wells never recovered, and impacts endure to this day, critics say. What wed like to see them do first, she says, is fully reclaim those lands that theyve mined, and reclaim the water as well. Right now, we cant even get Peabody to talk to us.

Peabody officials say they have reclaimed three-quarters of the land and vow to finish the task by 2027.

Having recently met with U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Ms. Horseherder is hopeful that the exposed land of the defunct mines will eventually be fully restored, preventing wind and rain from spreading toxic dust and heavy metals. I want to see the Navajo Nation take a really aggressive move toward energy standards and a more intentional move away from fossil fuel, she says. We just have to stop making stupid decisions.

Kendra Pinto stands beside one of several protest signs (dooda means no in Navajo) that she and col- leagues have erected in northwest New Mexico in their fight against oil and gas drilling.

When Kendra Pinto moved back to Navajo Nation in 2014 after three years in Chicago, she was shocked by what she found. While the coal industry had all but vanished on the western half of the reservation, oil and gas were booming in the east and doing so with a technology called fracking.

There was more noise; there was more traffic, Ms. Pinto recalls. What got my blood boiling was when I went on my favorite horse trail from my house. Its beautiful there. You can see everything all the way to Fajada Butte in Chaco [Culture National Historical Park]. In 2015, they cleared out a big section right in the middle of the trail, 5 acres.

Ms. Pinto had grown up with oil drilling, but nothing on this scale. Instead of small concrete pads with squat, grasshopper pump jacks, large swaths of land were scraped clean as construction teams cut triple-wide roads through remote backcountry and poured broad concrete plazas.

With fracking in full swing, Ms. Pinto was incensed. Crews were pumping pressurized water and additives deep into shale formations to force oil and gas to the surface. The returned water contained a cocktail of drilling chemicals, yet last year the Bureau of Land Management revealed plans to expand drilling across the region, which was already 92% leased creating up to 3,000 new wells.

Joining with other activists and a local group called Din CARE, Ms. Pinto soon found herself testifying before Congress but not before being arrested. In 2016, she went to Washington and participated in a small protest in the lobby of the Department of the Interior, carrying a keep it in the ground petition.

It was my first action ever, Ms. Pinto says. It was about making a statement. Were struggling out here, and D.C. needs to hear that.

She and 10 other women from around the country were handcuffed, charged with a felony, and bundled into six black SUVs, with four motorcycles in front and two in back.

They were driving us to the police station; all of the traffic was cleared, and we see everyone filming us. They were probably thinking it was somebody important. They had no idea it was just someone from the reservation.

Important or not, Ms. Pinto returned home a changed woman. With help from various environmental groups, she began tracking methane leaks at abandoned gas wells that have proliferated as companies have moved drilling operations into the area for short periods of time and then left.

If we can track a well site and something happens there, we have proof that its been having a problem that should have been taken care of, she says. That happens a lot around here. Out of sight, out of mind. Theres rarely oversight out here.

In 2016 in the nearby community of Nageezi, New Mexico, something did happen, but its cause is a mystery. Late on a July evening, flames suddenly erupted amid six active oil wells, spreading across 36 tanks containing 1,800 gallons of crude oil and sending billowing black smoke skyward for days. Despite the mishap, most residents of Nageezi support new drilling leases since oil and gas provide them with valuable royalty checks. Ms. Pinto remains undeterred.

There are those who think what Im doing is of no use, she says. I actually had an elder man ask me, Why are you fighting so hard? The Din people are going to be extinct in a hundred years.

The fracking industry faces threats from bottom lines as much as from committed activists. Before the current run-up in energy prices, more than 250 oil and gas companies in North America had liquidated between 2014 and 2021, according to Haynes and Boone, a firm that tracks energy company bankruptcies.

Yet even if the industry booms again, as energy prices rise, Ms. Pinto intends to keep fighting. She is making herself heard from the reservation to Washington.

Theyve always put a price tag on our forehead, and just expect us to be quiet, she says, standing beside one of the bold signs that she and colleagues erected along the regions main highway protesting the loss of sacred lands.

Allie Redhorse Young, who runs a foundation that advocates for voting and Indigenous rights, has organized drives to get Navajos to the polls on horseback.

Two weeks before last years presidential election, Allie Redhorse Young led voters to polling stations in a novel way on horseback. She and other organizers called it Ride to the Polls, and they were sending a message to Washington about inequities on the Navajo reservation, where a dearth of voting stations, short polling hours, and poor mail service are obstacles to voting. Only 27 post offices serve the entire Navajo Nation encompassing 27,000 square miles and delivery is legendarily slow.

I recently met Ms. Redhorse Young outside Farmington, New Mexico, in a dusty town called Kirtland on the San Juan River. Wearing cowboy boots, a skirt, and a denim jacket, she climbed into the corral behind her grandfathers hogan, coaxing several horses forward. By her account, Ride to the Polls was the realization of her fathers dream about Navajo riders saddling up to heal tribal divisions and her own dream of giving back to a nation shed left years earlier to attend boarding school and Dartmouth College.

Some people came from parts of the res that are in remote locations and met us there and then rode in with us, says Ms. Redhorse Young. But it was really to make a statement especially to Native young voters that this is what our ancestors had to do and that, yeah, some of us maybe dont have transportation. But if our grandparents and our ancestors saddled up to get to the polls, then we should exercise our right to vote, the right that they fought for.

The first Ride to the Polls was Oct. 20, 2020, in Arizona, where her father lives and from whom she borrowed horses. With another planned the following week, Ms. Redhorse Young discovered that Navajo Nation polling stations closed 10 days earlier than the rest of the state. She ended up leading the second Ride to the Polls on Election Day, attracting national headlines. Din and Hopi voters turned out in force that day, casting nearly 60,000 ballots that were overwhelmingly Democratic. Their vote proved pivotal in helping Democrat Joe Biden win by a slim margin of 10,000 votes in the state.

Since then, Arizona Republicans, saying theyre worried about fraud, have passed laws that they argue will safeguard the system, placing restrictions on such things as early voting and mail-in ballots. Critics say its just a form of voter suppression that particularly disadvantages voters in remote areas, like many Din, with poor infrastructure, no formal address, or limited transportation.

Ms. Redhorse Youngs new foundation, Protect the Sacred, in addition to promoting voting rights on the reservation, also supports programs that preserve the knowledge of Indigenous elders, dying languages, and traditional medicinal arts. Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers are medicine men, she says, adding, Those cultural roots are what brought me home.

Her work since returning to the res has been nationally recognized, including meeting in Washington with Vice President Kamala Harris two weeks before my visit to discuss Native American voting rights. She was one of just five Native leaders invited for the private audience. With midterm elections ahead, Ms. Redhorse Young worries about Navajo youth, many of whom believe that voting is akin to embracing white values.

But I say, look at what weve been able to accomplish, she says. [Interior] Secretary [Deb] Haaland is the first Native American Cabinet member confirmed and by the administration that we put into office.

Charlaine Tso, one of only three women on the Navajo Nation Council, stands near a mural in the bodys chambers in Window Rock, Arizona.

Charlaine Tso, a delegate on the Navajo Nation Council, knows what remote is, and I get a taste of it following her for half an hour on red-dust roads that crisscross the hard-baked land of the Southwest.

When we finally arrive below a line of soaring mesas, Ms. Tso sits outside her modest home describing her childhood in a household led by her mother and grandmother, who is still active at 103 years of age.

As a school principal, her mother would drive 90 minutes to work every day while Ms. Tso helped her grandmother herd sheep. She eventually attended her mothers school and saw leadership close up, returning each evening to a home with no electricity or running water as is true for more than 30% of the Navajo reservation today.

It wasnt until I left for college that we got electricity, says Ms. Tso. And water we didnt receive until my junior year in high school. We hauled water from the windmills. It was very tough.

Ms. Tso faced a new kind of hardship upon graduation. Shortly after her return home, a drunken driver hit her head-on along the same highway we had just been traveling. She was bedridden for months, found Christianity, and regained her mobility.

Several years later another tragedy prompted her to run for office. In her district, a harsh winter storm marooned an older woman in a remote home with no food and no firewood. Days after the weather cleared, her relatives found her frozen to death. Ms. Tso learned of the tragedy the next weekend while visiting from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I was, like, firewood? So much money is given to our tribe as assistance to our elders and our seniors. I was just so livid. Where were our leaders? I went back to Albuquerque and it stuck with me. I couldnt concentrate. I called my mom and said, Mom, when is the next election for council delegate?

With fluency in Navajo, she attracted many elders and prevailed in 2019 against three male candidates to become the youngest of only three women on the 24-member Navajo Nation Council, the highest body on the reservation.

While some of her votes in the Navajo capital of Window Rock have invited criticism, she is steadfast in championing issues such as elder care, missing and abused Native women, and education. She rails about federal pandemic funding that remains unspent because of infighting on the tribal council, and then makes a bold prediction about the place of women on the reservation.

Once it all comes crumbling down, there will be one woman that will be elected to the Navajo Nation, she says. Itll be history and she will turn everything around. Thats what has been told by our elders.

State Rep. Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren, who was soon to become a mother, poses beneath a red sandstone mesa near her paternal grandmothers home in Sweetwater, Arizona.

Dressed in resplendent Navajo garments, Arizona state Rep. Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren stands before a towering mesa as it burns brilliant red against a cobalt sky in the setting sun. She is on her grandmothers land a refuge for her after months of political wrangling in Phoenix. Her grandmother, who never attended school, looms as an inspiration.

As the eldest, she stayed home and had to herd sheep and take care of the family, says Ms. Blackwater-Nygren. She watched all of her younger siblings go on to high school and college and become teachers and nurses in the community, so in her mind she feels like she missed out on that opportunity to be something.

Her grandmothers sacrifice encouraged Ms. Blackwater-Nygren to get an undergraduate degree from Stanford University, go to law school, and pass the Arizona bar exam. She became the youngest member of the Arizona House of Representatives when she was appointed to the seat vacated by Arlando Teller, a member of the Navajo Nation, who resigned in January to join the Biden administration. She is a champion of education for Native youth and voting rights.

I knew that as a Democrat I was going to be in the minority party and that meant working across the aisle to get anything done, says Ms. Blackwater-Nygren. Unfortunately, she adds, Republicans had their own agenda, pushing restrictive voting bills. I spoke out against those bills. Native American voters across the board have the lowest voter turnout, period, of any minority group, and any voter suppression bill will only exacerbate that disparity.

Ms. Blackwater-Nygren wants to expand Native-owned solar energy projects. She also shepherded a bill through the House, which the governor has signed, allowing Native students to wear traditional attire at high school commencements. Mr. Teller originally introduced the bill after a Phoenix student was excluded from graduation for adorning her cap with regalia.

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She supported another bill, now law, creating an Arizona holiday honoring Navajo Code Talkers, like her grandfather, who used their traditional language to transmit secret messages during World War II.

As a new mother, Ms. Blackwater-Nygren thinks a lot about her place in Navajo society amid persistent unemployment, substance abuse, and violence against women. Its that sense of taking care of the family, that role of what the Navajo woman is, and transforming it into leadership and communitywide positions. Theres definitely a sense that women are becoming stronger and more powerful voices.

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From activism to electoral politics: Five Navajo women on the rise - The Christian Science Monitor

Research continues to show the benefits of educators of color on all students and the positive effects of same-race principals on students and teachers of colormore Black students in advanced courses, higher math scores, and the hiring of more Black teachers, for example.

Still, while 54 percent of students in public schools nationwide are nonwhite, nearly 80 percent of principals are white. Theres an especially yawning gap between the growing Hispanic student enrollment and Hispanic leaders of color: Hispanic students accounted for 27 percent of public-school students in the fall of 2019, while only 9 percent of principals were from the same background that year, according to federal data.

Schools are growing more and more racially diverse by the year, and we are just not keeping up in the education workforce, said Diarese George, the founder and executive director of the Tennessee Educators of Color Alliance, who was also the first Black teacher to be hired in the Clarksville School District. We have to be more intentional. We have to be more strategic. Its been on the back burner for a while.

Yet, if theyre willing to look and devote time and resources to the effort, districts have several tools at their disposal to attract and retain more leaders of color. Education Week looked at concrete approaches that are working for some districts as they work to close these chronic gaps.

Its not enough for school systems to say they desire a diverse workforce. They must explicitly make a commitment to doing so.

Districts, such as Winston-Salem/Forsyth County in North Carolina and Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Ky., for example, have adopted racial equity policies that list recruiting and retaining an effective diverse workforce among their goals.

In the Jefferson County Public Schools, the racial equity plan adopted in 2019 committed the district to growing the percentage of teachers of color from 16 percent in 2018 to 18 percent by 2020 and increasing the administrators of color from 31 percent in 2018 to 36 percent in 2020. (The plan was updated this summer, with the district pledging to increase the share of administrators of color working in the school system to 49 percent and continue efforts to recruit leaders of color.)

The district also pledges to train the site-based school councils on the importance of staff diversity, expand efforts to steer promising teachers of color into school and district leadership, and review internal policies that may be barriers for educators of color.

After adopting its racial equity plan last year, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools hired former principal Leslie Alexander as an area superintendent to oversee leadership diversity and applied for and received a grant from the Wallace Foundation, a New York City-based philanthropy, to focus on developing equity-centered principals.

As part of the grant, the district plans to work with historically Black colleges and universities in the statethree of which are within a 30-minute driveto train a pipeline of equity-centered teachers and leaders for the school system and provide professional development for current district leaders.

Such public and unequivocal commitment to workforce diversity helps districts set aside funding or solicit grants, if necessary, to hire staff to lead and support initiatives tied to those goals.

Its also easier to hold the school system accountable if those goals have targets, benchmarks, and departments responsible for seeing them through as is the case in Louisville. And it increases the likelihood that the commitment would survive multiple administrations, given high superintendent turnover.

It has to be named, it has to be prioritized, it has to be valued, said Gini Pupo-Walker, the executive director of Ed Trust Tennessee and the first Latina elected to a local school board in the state.

Shaterika J. Parks, director of recruitment and retention, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools

The recruitment process starts with teachers. If there arent a lot of teachers of color entering the profession, it will be difficult for school systems to achieve their objectives of boosting leaders of color.

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County has benefited for years from its close partnerships with several local historically Black colleges and universities or HBCUs. While those schools have churned out a steady supply of Black teachers, the district does not have a similar advantage when it comes to Hispanic leaders.

Shaterika J. Parks, the districts director of recruitment and retention, is developing a similar pipeline for Latino educators. She has partnered with Ana G. Mendez University, the largest private university in Puerto Rico, which also offers online programs and has campuses in Florida and Texas, on recruitment events to tap into the schools alumni network on the island and in the continental United States.

Districts should develop guidelines and criteria to steer talented teachers into school leadership roles and ensure that all teachers get an equal shot at leadership opportunities.

Teachers and aspiring leaders should also know how to get from one rung of the ladder to the next, and there should be built-in district supports to help them get there.

Promoting from within and actively seeking out candidates of color when opportunities arise are crucial to boosting leadership diversity, Parks said. So are clearing hurdles that keep them from applying for school leadership roles and additional training.

And sometimes, teachers arent thinking about leadership positions until they are specifically asked about it or steered in that direction.

Thats how Diamond Cotton, the principal of Kimberley Park Elementary School in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, made the leap from the classroom to the principals office.

About three years into teaching, Cottons principal inquired whether shed ever considered school leadership and suggested that Cotton give it some thought.

Even though shed wanted to be a teacher since she was a child, Cotton had not contemplated moving beyond the classroom. After seeing Cottons potentialand that of some of her colleaguesthe principal ensured that they all had leadership roles in the school, including opportunities to mentor other teachers and improve their instructional leadership skills.

After completing graduate school and filling in for a colleague in a school leadership role, Cotton knew her future was in the principalship.

She worked as an AP and a principal for several years. And about a year and a half ago, seeing Cottons successes with students with disabilities and English-language learners, the then-superintendent offered Cotton the chance to restart Kimberley Park, where all of the students qualify for federal free and reduced-price meals.

Four of Cottons colleagues from her first school are also principals in the districtand it all goes back to their principal who spotted their potential.

George, from the Tennessee Educators of Color Alliance, argues that districts must take a close look at the teachers of color in their districts and not default to the position that there are so few of them.

You have a lot of people who are sitting on administrator licenses, who have never been an [assistant principal], and who are trying to get into leadership roles, he said. We have to start looking at that... What are we doing to support people who want to move into administration?

Teachers of color can also be overlooked in other ways, George said. They often are assigned to schools and classrooms that present significant teaching challenges; so, when districts are looking for exemplary teachers solely by using students test scores as the measure, many teachers of color may not rise immediately to the top of the list, he said.

He argues that districts should consider some of the other skills that teachers of color bring to the table, including their ability to foster a positive climate in their classrooms, work with at-risk students, and communicate with parents and the community.

Many leaders of color do not make it past the assistant principal role, which George noted is often a career-killer.

Researchers in a study on the assistant principalship released this year posited that while there could be outright bias in the hiring process, its also possible that APs of color werent getting the right experiencesespecially with instructionally focused tasksto prepare them for school leadership jobs. APs of color, especially Black men, are often assigned to discipline and miss out on the instructional, budgeting, and scheduling experiencesall important responsibilities in running a school.

Districts should ensure that APs of color are matched with mentors and have access to professional development resources to develop the wide range of skills and knowledge they need to be successful principals.

Its important to have those one-on-one conversations to say, We are invested in you, here are these opportunities, and we dont think youre taking advantage of them, Parks said.

Alexander, the area superintendent in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County who runs the assistant principal program, said the district has been strategic about steering teacher-leaders of color into AP roles and providing experiences that will help them to be successful. Monthly meetings include a focus on curriculum, instruction, data, and equity, she said.

If leaders of color have access to the same types of experiences and professional development as their peers, including on instruction, budgeting, equity, and culturally responsive teaching practices, that would give them an equal shot at open positions.

We have to make sure that all of our APs have that same level of development, Alexander said.

Mnica Bruce, a Latina assistant principal who is part of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County assistant principal program, said shes getting a lot of opportunities to grow and network with other school leaders. She recently participated in an intense year-long course on culturally responsive leadership at a local university through its partnership with the district.

Bruce, who was born in El Salvador and started her professional career in marketing before moving to education, is part of a district association for assistant principals, which has developed workshops and other opportunities for the districts assistant principals. The group also meets with senior district leadership and passes on concerns, needs, and other feedback.

Were always in the loop, she said. Were always provided opportunities, and,...personally, Ive been very fortunate to be a part of these opportunities.

Historically Black colleges and universities are untapped resources for districts that want to increase the leaders of color in their systems, said Jean Desravines, the executive director of New Leaders, a New York City-based preparation program for aspiring school leaders where 60 percent of the graduates are people of color.

But districts must be intentional about forming partnerships with these higher education institutions for their efforts to be successful.

The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County and Jefferson County districts both plan to use a portion of an estimated $8.2 million in grant money theyre each receiving from the Wallace Foundation to work with HBCUs in their regions to develop a pipeline of leaders of color and provide professional development for current leaders.

Districts can work with the local universities to refine recruitment and selection processes for candidates and ensure that the districts and the universities goals around expectations for principals are aligned.

Diarese George, founder and executive director of Tennessee Educators of Color Alliance

Districts can also partner with nonprofits and community organizations that work with educators of color.

The Tennessee Educators of Color Alliance, for example, is working with two districts as they develop plans to comply with a new state law that requires school systems to set educator-diversity goals. It has conducted focus groups with educators of color to understand their experiences and has set up affinity groups for educators of color in one of the districts.

Everyone is not going to be comfortable talking to their districts about the pain points, George said.

Staff diversity wont happen by chance. Districts must have clear hiring strategies, including where and how they are recruiting candidates.

Parks, the director of recruitment in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, knows the district cant use the same game plan, which relied heavily on its ties to HBCUs, to boost the number of Hispanic leaders. While there are Hispanic-serving institutions across the country, they have a smaller alumni presence in North Carolina.

Parks had started advertising specific jobs and promoting the district, in general, in Language Magazine, a monthly used heavily by bilingual educators, and on local websites serving the Hispanic community.

The district is also considering sponsoring teachers who are newly arrived immigrants or others who may already be in the country, something that Winston-Salem/Forsyth County had not traditionally relied on as a recruitment tool.

Parks has established a bilingual recruitment roundtable, with Hispanic educators across the school system, to hear their ideas on how to reach Hispanic educators and draw them to the district. It was from that roundtable and from Hispanic educators that Parks learned about Ana G. Mendez University.

Knowing that the pool of Latino school leaders is already small, Parks is not above enticing leaders from other districts to join Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.

We have to be creative about who we know whove already been in schools, who already have these experiences, who can bring that talent over to us, Parks said. The more representation we have, the better I think well do with recruiting other high-quality candidates of Latino descent.

In the future, Tricia McManus, the superintendent, sees targeted outreach to Latino employees, again recognizing the need for personalization. That may include direct e-mails and invitations to specific employees, inviting them to information sessions on school leadership and how they can enter the districts school leadership pipeline. Similar outreach worked in Hillsborough County, where McManus worked before moving to Winston-Salem/Forsyth County. Invitations were also given to principals, who were asked to give them to Hispanic and Black teachers and leaders in their schools.

Everybody feels valued, engaged, and supported in very different ways, McManus said. So, I think its important that we find out what that looks like for each group.

In Louisville, the district created a diversity hiring specialist position based in the districts Diversity, Equity, and Poverty Programs Division and not in its human resources office. The diversity hiring specialist accompanies human resources staffers on recruitment initiatives, plays a critical advisory role in the selection process for principal and other senior district leaders, and works with the districts university partners.

Being more deliberate and having clear hiring practices means that we are able to consider more people and consider more individuals of color, said Aimee Green-Webb, the districts chief of human resources.

Parks, who is Black, leans heavily on the expertise of Latino employeesnot just teachersto ensure that she is reaching the right people and looking for candidates in the right places. Thats how Puerto Ricos Ana G. Mendez University became a district talent source.

It was literally talking to Latino educators, and they were like, My principal came from there. My AP came from there. Clearly, they were producing good leaders, said Parks.

They also helped Parks organize a national recruitment event, where teacher-candidates dropped in virtually to learn about the district from Parks and Latino teachers and other Latino employees.

We do have people who are already great, who are working in the district, she said. If they feel valued, theyll tell more people.

The district is also looking to partner with local agencies to help smooth the transition and settlement for new recruits, who may be coming from abroad, including helping them find housing and reliable transportation.

Theres a lot that those who run school systems dont understand about the experiences of educators of color, including leaders of color, and that can only come from having deep conversations with employees and taking steps to address their feedback and concerns, George said.

We havent done the qualitative research to talk to them about what the pain points are, the issues, the struggles, George said.

For example, one of the districts he works with was hiring more educators of color, but not keeping up with the exodus of such educators. The Tennessee Educators of Color Alliance organized focus groups to understand why nonwhite educators were leaving. It found, among other things, that they did not feel they were part of a community and that professional development was not targeted to their experiences or to the communities they served.

Listening to your employees on a regular basis is a way to head off such concerns. In Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, Superintendent McManus meets monthly with assistant principals. Those meetings are instrumental in the setting the course for the development APs receive, McManus said.

And monthly meetings with the area superintendent begins with requests for feedback on whats working and whats not working.

Districts such as Boston Public Schools and Winston-Salem/Forsyth also have created affinity groups to encourage a sense of belonging and provide mentoring and professional development opportunities for school leaders of color.

Its around being intentional and thoughtful about how to ensure that these leaders are being supported or have a safe space where they can engage in conversation about whats working and whats not working, discuss some of the challenges they are facing, and focus on their development and support, said Desravines, of New Leaders.

While districts have a chance to steer students into teaching and ultimately into leadership through grow your own programs and initiatives, they should also do their best to make education an attractive career option.

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County has had a small teacher-cadet program for about a decade, which has been successful in steering students into education. The district is looking to expand that program to seven schools over the next two years, with a specific emphasis on recruiting Latino students into teaching.

Districts also should be ready to discuss their plans with specificity, including their recruitment efforts, the school systems culture, and the support available to leaders and employees of color.

And they should also tap leaders from diverse backgrounds to share their experiences working in the districtand answer questions from job candidates during career fairs and other recruitment efforts.

A lot of it has been about mobilizing our current Latino-identifying employees, Parks said. Its something that interests them. They want to bring more Latinos to the community. They want to work in a place that reflects the community they serve.

Its already tough for school leaders of color to be the first or among the few leaders of color in the district. Theres often the weight of feeling like they are representing an entire community.

Its a huge responsibility, said Bruce, who also stressed that one of the reasons she got into education was to be a role model.

Spanish-speaking educators, for example, are often called on to provide translation services for families. Pupo-Walker remembers being a teacher and having to take time away from teaching or preparation to go to the principals office to translate for parents and students.

Districts can also think carefully about how they assign school leaders of color to schools and district networks.

Black school leaders are often appointed to the most challenging schools, without the necessary support to help them succeed, George said. They should be positioned to lead anywherenot just in the areas that are hardest to staff, he said.

A lot of the time you have to earn your keep, George said. It burns you out.

When Diamond Cotton in Winston-Salem/Forsyth was first moved to Kimberley Park Elementary, the school was struggling. But the superintendent gave Cotton flexibility to hire staff and create academic support programs. Teachers were trained on trauma-informed and restorative practices and Cotton developed a cadre of master classroom teachers to help their peers. All of these programs had the support of the district leadership.

Its important that leaders understand where we are, have the resources to be able to motivate us, but not only that, listen to us and be supportive of the things were trying to do in our schools, said Cotton.

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Principals of Color Are Scarce. Here's What Districts Are Doing About It - Education Week

When I was seven years old, I lived through one of the deadliest weather-related disasters in recent U.S. history.

It was July 1995 and my family lived in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago, IL, in a two-story house on a corner lot with a big, beautiful weeping willow tree and a few purple lilac bushes in the backyard (ironic to me now, because theyre both non-native to Illinois, like us). My dad was a steel salesman and my mom was taking night classes to become a nurse and taught flute lessons on the side. We had a cocker spaniel that my older brother named Toby, after the baby in Jim HensonsThe Labyrinth. Most importantly for the purposes of this essay, we had central air conditioning.

Over the weekend of July 12-15, 1995, heat index temperatures (what it really feels like outside when combining the effects of air temperature and humidity on your body) in Chicagoland would soar to over 110F during the day and be buoyed up over 80F by the urbanized landscape overnight. Temperatures would sit at or over 100F for 42 hours that weekend. This oppressively extreme heatwave had crippling effects on urban infrastructure: firefighters were opening hydrants and using the water to lubricate the bridges downtown, so water pressure would drop unexpectedly throughout the city. A few roads buckled and contorted, keeping emergency vehicles from reaching those in dire need of assistance, while rolling blackouts plagued neighborhoods across the city.

This heatwave also dramatically changed the way we understand how social equity and climate stressors interact in our cities. Depending on the estimate, over 750 people died over the course of the heat wave, and many of these deaths were attributable to heat-related exacerbations of underlying conditions like chronic respiratory diseases. Moreover, the relative risk of dying during the heatwave was substantially higher among the elderly and Black populations in Chicago.Eric Klinenberg wrote a book about this heat waveand showed that, among these disproportionately affected Black neighborhoods, there was a history of isolating disinvestment and social fragmentation that further elevated the risk of death.

Meanwhile, just a few miles away as the crow flies, I was enjoying my familys central air conditioning. We bought a small, plastic baby pool to put under the weeping willows shade to cool us off when we ventured outside. We ate ice cream and freeze pops and used the slip-and-slide. We didnt suffer heat-related illness or death. The immense level of privilege and safety afforded to me and my family by the social structures that award and protect whiteness at the expense of Black life is sharply apparent in my otherwise rosy memory of the July 1995 heat wave. Today, as a white male climate scientist at an institution focused on expanding access to scientific information, I wonder how human-caused climate change which has already made these heat wave events more common, longer in duration, and hotter than in decades past will further amplify these existing inequities. Furthermore, I have learned that we absolutely must invest in place-based strategies to prepare and empower communities with actionable science tools and data to achieve true climate justice.

Human-caused climate change, brought about by the gradual accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from the near-constant combustion of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gasoline to power our world, doesnt affect humans the same way everywhere. Sure, I think that we hear about the effects of climate change more often now than we used to itll get hotter and wetter, and coastal cities are going to have a lot of flooding issues, and a lot of people are concerned about this (or theyre blatantly denying that this exists) but these impacts are usually spoken about at the scale of whole states, entire continents, or the world at large. Not only are climate changes effects talked about at such vague magnitudes, but in many cases we also hold on to the perception that the effects of climate change remain far away in time and place: its not quite that bad yet; its not so bad here. This is a common frame of mind that I encounter in my work, especially when interacting with predominantly wealthy, white audiences, where extreme climate impacts remain abstracted behind a veil of privileged adaptive capacity (like air conditioning, flood insurance) or overall lower exposure to the stressors to begin with (through infrastructure like parks and tree canopy).

What we lose when we speak about climate change on these kinds of scales of time (its in the future) and place (its far away from me), of course, are the residents. The neighborhoods. The city blocks. The communities. And as it turns out, its at this scale where human-caused climate change really bears its gritty, inequitable teeth: any given persons vulnerability to climate change is really just an intensification of the precarity that they were already experiencing. I can tell you a lot about your vulnerability to climate change just by knowing your zip code. Climate change simply amplifies the background hum of inequity in our world, which itself is perpetuated by the social systems that protect wealth and whiteness at the expense of communities of color.

Here in Richmond, we see climate change inequity play out most dramatically in theurban heat island mapthat was generated with community science observations of air temperature during a heat wave in July 2017. We discovered a 16F difference between the hottest and coolest places at the same time, in the same city. These temperature differences are largely explained by the amount of green amenities like trees and parks in some places and the dominance of hard, human surfaces like wide, multilane roads and short buildings in others. Much like the trends we saw play out in the 1995 heat wave in Chicago, these hotter areas experience higher rates of ambulance visits for heat-related illnesses and the majority (~60%) of those heat-related illnesses are experienced by people of color. The likelihood of experiencing a heat-related illness is also higher if youre near a stop on our transit system network or walking outdoors in these hotter areas.

To some,the results of our studywere not altogether surprising, given the fact that the extreme heat map itself mirrored dozens of other maps of inequity in Richmond food deserts,vacant properties,income, race,asthma,diabetes, social vulnerability, and life expectancyall vary in step with our extreme heat observations. How does this come to be?

Over the last few years as a white male working on this research at a public science museum, Ive needed to reflect on how best I can leverage my position and resources to amplify the mission of other organizations that are seeking to achieve justice across these intersectional issues. Ive learned a lot about these topics from work likeThe Black ButterflyandThe Color of Law,and had the opportunity to explore how the Cityshistory of redlining,subsequent decades of disinvestment and marginalization through planning, and evenpreindustrial trends in neighborhood placementhave either locked into place existing environmental inequity or physically made it worse both here in Richmond and around the country. But, exploring these trends and data doesnt ameliorate the generational trauma felt by present-day residents, or achieve equity by itself it merely shows us how intersectional the impacts of climate change are in the scope of all other inequities shaped by decision makers and policy for centuries.

So, what do I think would advance environmental justice and climate resilience in Richmond?

I strongly feel that we need to boldly create spaces that other cities have been afraid to offer: our institutions need to acknowledge the Citys past and connect with their own history, leading with radical vulnerability (a term that Ive learned from my colleagueDuron Chavis) as well as humility; our grant proposal budgets need to focus financial support into organizations and projects that are already working to lift up the lived experience of marginalized communities of color in the climate justice planning process instead of creating duplicative efforts or unnecessary and damaging competition; we must continue the burgeoning trend toward concentrated, intentional community consultation on the design of and prioritization of capital projects that are needed to ameliorate environmental inequity. I understand that these strategies are long-range and amorphous and difficult to implement immediately, especially with the consistent pushback from historically privileged communities in taking on this approach. However, the co-benefits of employing these strategies in our climate action planning and execution may then permeate other processes, from transportation planning to housing to City budgets.

What can be done to reduce the extreme nature of our Citys thermal inequity over the short term?

Richmond could, with enough political will and leadership, install shade canopies across our transit and pedestrian area systems to provide the bare minimum of protection from extreme heat exposure almost overnight.These and other types of engineered shade structures are extremely effectiveand could be implemented virtually anywhere in the city, especially along our most-used bus routes. These structures would also shelter transit riders not only from heat but also from rain, snow, and wind. Built with native plant gardens and stormwater harvesting capabilities, we could see these transportation infrastructure investments as co-beneficial interventions that address numerous urban design flaws that give rise to health and environmental inequity. Of course, we also know that trees are natures air conditioning units and there arefewer and shorter trees in formerly redlined areas. Investing inTree Equityis yet another promising practice that has emerged as cities and nonprofits turn their attention toward thermal inequity as well as the mental and physical health benefits of living in greener areas. Ive also explored how increasing a citys housing density (which, if mandated to include affordable, mixed-income communities and functional public green spaces by updating our zoning code, would address several of our current issues at once including providing a way to minimize green gentrification)could lead to additional temperature reliefduring our hottest events by creating shade.

How can we realize climate justice strategies?

Many of these strategies, both explicitly and implicitly, are being emphasized in our Citys recentRichmond 300 planas well as the rapidly-developing RVAgreen2050 plan, which specifically centers equitable approaches to climate change action throughout its process. While these plans are great progress (and we should celebrate them as such), we must demand more. Implementing these plans will require coalitions of organizationslike those weve been working with on recent climate resilience literacy projectsthat understand that climate change justice is racial justice.

In my view, centering these values in our climate change resilience and environmental justice work would lead to climate resilience policy decisions in Richmond that incorporate the values of community members, demonstrably improve community health and wellbeing, and bolster socioeconomic equity across the city. Theres also a way to see that these policies would transform other aspects of our city, such that your race or zip code no longer predicts your life expectancy, your income, your access to transportation, your summertime temperature, your food security, your propensity to chronic illness, your educational attainment, your credit score.

Dr. Jeremy Hoffman is the Chief Scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia and Affiliate Faculty in the L. Douglas Wilder School and the Center for Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Hoffman connects audiences to their changing planet through participatory environmental research and interactive, hands-on, and immersive experiences, earning recognition as one of Style Weekly Richmonds Top 40 Under 40 in 2019 and one of the Grist 50 Fixers for 2020.

This essay is part of theRichmond Racial Equity Essays series,exploring what racial equity looks like in Richmond, Virginia. It is reprinted here with permission. Check out thefull project, the accompanyingvideos,and thepodcast.

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Climate Resilience And Justice In Richmond - rvamag.com

CALGARY, Alberta, Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Benevity, Inc., a global leader in ESG technology, today announced the acquisition of Alaya, a purpose-driven employee engagement SaaS platform. Based in Switzerland, with a presence in Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Singapore, Alaya enables businesses to engage employees in volunteering and positive actions through its innovative technology.

The addition of Alaya will allow Benevity to expand its international presence and enable more companies to access its growing suite of corporate purpose solutions. Benevity already helps over 700 of the worlds most iconic brands engage their stakeholders in ESG, purpose and social impact initiatives. The deal is expected to close December 15, 2021.

Benevity is known for bringing bold vision and innovative solutions to the corporate social responsibility space, said Kelly Schmitt, Benevitys Chief Executive Officer. The ESG-related technology sector is growing rapidly and its importance in helping attract, retain and engage employees and customers is critical. Alayas localized expertise in Europe and Asia, its reputation for stellar client service and its passionate, mission-driven culture are the perfect complement to Benevity.

Benevity is a category leader, having pioneered software that enables companies to engage their customers and employees to support the causes they care about, manage their community investments and grants, match employee donations, engage employees in volunteering and measure social and business impact on a global scale.

When we founded Benevity we were intentional about trying to create cultural impact at scaleboth within companies and in broader societymainly because collective action is required to solve most of the worlds most pressing issues, said Bryan de Lottinville, Benevitys Founder and Executive Chairperson. This joining of forces with a like-minded international star comes at a time when ESG and social impact are becoming paramount to investors, consumers, employees and the public looking for business to drive measurable social and environmental change. Together with Alaya, Benevity is poised to deliver hyper-local solutions for even more companies across the globe.

Alaya brings expertise and understanding of cultural nuance in international markets and a strong track record of client delight among the more than 90 companies using their platform. Their innovative technology with localized volunteering and giving content is designed for companies looking to engage employees and address social, environmental and well-being challenges.

Alaya was founded with the goal of putting purpose at the center of every company on the planet. By uniting with a visionary company like Benevity, we are one step closer to doing that, said Andr Abreu, Alayas Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder. Alayas international expertise and engaging user experience, combined with Benevitys industry-leading ESG technology will enable companies and their stakeholders to bring more positive action to the world every day.

The acquisition of Alaya builds on Benevitys rapid growth in the past year, including investments by software investor Hg, TPGs The Rise Fund, and Generation Investment Management. Earlier this year, Benevity acquired online community platform Chaordix. The company now offers a digital community solution that enables companies to engage Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), customers and other companies to collaborate on ideas and drive collective action in support of social and environmental issues.

Companies around the world are recognizing the importance of building purpose into their businesses and creating opportunities for their employees to engage in the causes they care about, said Maya Chorengel, Co-Managing Partner of The Rise Fund and Benevity board member. Adding the power of Alaya will allow Benevity to reach a broader set of companies across international markets and deliver them authentic, locally relevant impact solutions.

About BenevityBenevity, a certified B Corporation, is a leader in global corporate purpose software, providing the only integrated suite of community investment and employee, customer and nonprofit engagement solutions. Recognized as one of Fortunes Impact 20,Benevity offers cloud solutions that power purpose for many iconic brands in ways that better attract, retain and engage todays diverse workforce, embed social action into their customer experiences and positively impact their communities. With software that is available in 22 languages, Benevity has processed nearly $8 billion in donations and 43 million hours of volunteering time to support 326,000 nonprofits worldwide. The companys solutions also facilitated 530,000 positive actions and awarded 1.2 million grants worth $12 billion. For more information, visit http://www.benevity.com.

About AlayaAlaya is a global software provider enabling companies to build a purpose-driven culture and engage employees to make an impact, one act at a time. Headquartered in Switzerland, with a presence in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Singapore, more than 90 companies partner with Alaya to easily manage their purpose-driven CSR and employee engagement programs, through volunteering, giving or taking simple actions to support sustainability, diversity, equity and inclusion and wellbeing. For more information, visit Alayagood.com.

Media Contact:Lauren Stewart Media & Communications Manager 1.403.560.6968 press@benevity.com

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5dd39eee-dd5a-4fbf-85ab-d85818ee2780

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a1670718-23d1-4d97-864d-8fa4ddd366e2

See the article here:

Benevity Expands Global Footprint with Acquisition of Alaya - GlobeNewswire