Diversity Task Force Call January 14

Diane, Sarah, Lorna, Betsy, Meredith, Monica, Jesus

Sarah: let's do go-round with each one sharing a little bit about the new year and what is resonating for us in the DTF

Meredith: this year like last year is bringing a lot of changes about which I'm excited; RESULTS will have a fellow through the Hunger Center; working in DTF is big chunk of plan; Michael Richardson -- bio at Hunger Center.org.

Sarah: Inauguration coming up; helped organize a meeting with transition team on Friday between team and coalition about establishing a Global Fund for Education. Impressed with collaborative nature of meeting. Indicative of a political-cultural shift; our own shift in education with webinars.

Betsy: will be a presenter at the University of Miami's Poverty Conference; she will email DTF participants for input.

Diane: Diane did a call with the RCs. It went well. One idea came out of it to do calls with group leaders on diversity.am integrating new members into existing group; will start reaching out again in April.

Meredith: when we think about outreach to bring people into group is to train them and bring out their best -- that is the work of the DTF.

Monica: 1) pilot city project -- group is planning; four new members
2) want to continue work with data gathered in 2008
3) share news of DTF everywhere across organization

Jesus: wants to continue to foster cooperation with other organizations in terms of increasing our diversity.

Pilot City Project
NC group took break in Nov. and Dec. from pilot city project. We are starting to focus on specific documents we want translated. Voter status clarification on lobbying. Got feedback from Diane, Ken and others. Non-citizens are doing education rather than lobbying. Will forward documents to Jesus as they are identified. Looking for how RESULTS works documents only.
Betsy -- can we get translations onto website?
Monica -- already done in Spanish; more languages to come?
Sarah -- new website due in Spring.
Meredith -- we could come up with a couple of terms to link to site.
Sarah -- lobbying and status: if you're a resident you're technically a constituent. Non-resident non-citizens can play a role in education and using their own experience.
Lorna -- formal lobbying vs. informal lobbying.
Monica -- a lot of our new members are students or those with work visas.
Diane -- will email group on web pages she needs help on.

Best Practices Form Update
Lorna will design questions based on specific input from group on material to be collected.

Diversity Training and Webinar
1) Applying dialogue in the exploration of diversity outreach
Lorna -- background and practice
Monica -- training on phone and then in person at IC?
Lorna -- let's experiment with it; the more you do dialogue the better you get. I will be happy to do personal coaching after initial training.
Betsy -- format?
Lorna -- everyone will have their own PowerPoint copy and use conference call format to practice. Dialogue is great for diversity outreach because you don't have to come up with the answers and you don't have to advocate. It's highly participatory and everyone learns.
Sarah -- let's limit it to at most 12 - 14 people because it's more participatory. When looking at specific oppression issues, we can invite larger groups of people to join. This first one would be scheduled for two hours.
Lorna -- let's change name from webinar to webcon. Let's have nothing else on that Saturday. It's a real pilot.

First Webcon: Sat., Feb. 7, 4-6 p.m. Eastern.
Meredith would like to invite new Hunger Fellow. Diane will invite Douglas Lichterman. Meredith suggests other Grassroots Board members. Lorna suggests because this is our pilot, if we want to assess whether this process works, that we be the guinea pigs and invite others based on results of it.