Articles

CommUnity Institute Update: BOLD Race Relations Program Now Offered to Public, New Funding Sought

Faith And The City e.Letter
Volume 3 Issue 6
June 23, 2004

Atlanta living is parallel living when it comes to race and ethnicity. Groups for the most part are socially segregated from one another, and that perpetuates the historical inequities among them. Yet, we are mandated by God to love and care for the stranger Ð a faith doctrine that spans religious traditions and calls us beyond ethnicity and race.
Jan Swanson
Director, CommUnity Institute

With several years of careful planning and a pair of successful pilot projects, the CommUnity Institute at Faith And The City is now offering its intensive 80-hour race and human relations BOLD Program to corporations, government agencies, and other organizations.

BOLD, an acronym for Building Opportunities for Leadership and long-term Dialogue, "definitely is not the anti-racism training of the past," said Jan Swanson, director of the CommUnity Institute. "BOLD goes well beyond tolerance and diversity training to get at the underlying challenge of sustaining positive human relations.

According to Swanson, "BOLD strengthens the effectiveness of individuals and organizations in addressing systemic injustice and inequity. It directly addresses issues of race, but also considers bias based on gender, ethnicity, or religion."

BOLD is more effective than traditional approaches because of it employs an "experiential learning process that frees people to express themselves honestly and authentically to each other," Swanson added. Such dialogue creates a foundation of trust and empathy in addressing sensitive social justice issues. BOLD participants can then move forward together to address personal and institutional injustice and inequity with "extraordinary effectiveness" in their personal lives, workplaces, and communities.

"We developed BOLD in close cooperation with consultants who have decades of experience in race relations and human relations training in the public and private sectors," Swanson said. "Since last fall, we have launched two pilot classes to further refine the process. It has been extremely well received, and it's ready now to help organizations nurture leadership in today's increasingly diverse workplaces."

BOLD Program participants agree with Swanson's assessment of the program's capacity to build leadership for organizations and the metro community.

"BOLD has the potential to develop a critical mass of leaders with the capacity of listening well to one another to establish the dialogue that moves us beyond conversation to authentic and constructive relationships" said Frank J. McCloskey, vice president for Diversity and Workplace Ethics at Georgia Power and a 2003 program participant.

Patricia Budd, one of McCloskey's BOLD classmates, concurs. "The programs of the CommUnity Institute, including BOLD, can be extremely valuable in the ongoing development of positive human relations in the metropolitan area," explained Budd, vice president of Human Resources for United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta.

In addition to now offering BOLD to public and private sector organizations, the CommUnity Institute is seeking funding for ongoing operation. "We are in full-swing to secure contributions to help launch this new initiative and expand the availability of our other programs," explained Swanson. "Although we charge a fee for BOLD participation, it will be a while before we reach our goal of establishing the program on a self-sustaining basis."

BOLD is one of three major programs of the CommUnity Institute at Faith And The City, all of which are geared to improving human relations and encouraging inter=personal and inter-group dialogue throughout the Atlanta metro community. The other two initiatives are the Congregational Exchange Program, mentioned earlier, and the Friend To Friend Program, which brings families together across racial and faith lines to share each other's hospitality.

Faith And The City, a nonprofit organization founded in 1999 and co-chaired today by former U.S. Ambassadors James T. Laney and Andrew Young, nurtures a sense of mutual community and shared responsibility across cultural, ethnic, racial, and religious lines throughout the 20-county Atlanta metro region.

(Ed. note: The BOLD program was featured in the April 2004 issue of the Faith And The City e.Letter.)

Read "The CommUnity Institute Story."

For more information on how your organization can work with the CommUnity Institute or how to support the Institute's programs, call Jan Swanson at 404-523-5554 or email her at jswanson@faithandthecity.org.