Training
The Beloved Community Initiative offers training opportunities for youth and adults from across the state to learn to recognize and respond to bias and racism (our own and others’), to build equitable relationships, to communicate effectively across difference, and to develop strategies to challenge organizational barriers to inclusion and facilitate change.
A youth camp will be offered each summer that will enhance youth leadership skills and will specifically focus on training and skill-building for youth.
We also facilitate learning across the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa and support growth opportunities such as workshops and leadership training.
BECOMING BELOVED COMMUNITY WHERE YOU ARE: A WEEK OF LEARNING FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Beloved Community offers a five-day deep-dive for young people who desire to work together to create beloved community. Each day focuses on a different part of the work: telling the truth, proclaiming the dream, practicing the way of love, and becoming beloved community where you are. Through teaching, videos, activities, journaling, discussion, and guest speakers, participants gain knowledge and tools they need to work towards a community that works for all people.
Have a group of students that would be interested in participating in Becoming Beloved Community over a week or a series of weekends? Let us know!
Dismantling Racism: Training for Church Leaders
Beloved Community Initiative offers Dismantling Racism: Training for Church Leaders, a training day that is required of all lay and ordained leaders in The Episcopal Church (including vestries, search committees, diocesan leadership, etc.). The training day has been restructured to reflect The Episcopal Church's commitment to this work as part of our lifelong spiritual formation and our church's long-term commitment to racial justice, healing, and reconciliation. Ideally, every chapter will schedule a training day in their area in 2019.
REQUEST A TRAINING
HUMANIZE MY HOODIE ALLY TRAINING
Our friends at Humanize My Hoodie have developed an online workshop experience that provides a comprehensive course on their approach to preventing racist attacks on Black people, Indigenous People, and other People of Color. The subject matter is pertinent to professionals in wide array of backgrounds: public health, mental health, juvenile justice, criminal justice, education, higher education, foster care, and community-defined evidence – in its attention to clothing and the irrational fear of people of color, particularly Black people. Using several innovative strategies, this online workshop experience mirrors the in-person ally workshop that has received overwhelming success. Workshop facilitators educate by using historical analysis, case law, theory and application opportunities, lecture, transformative assignments, and self-care breaks to maximize learning potential. Participants will gain valuable knowledge to reduce threat perception, identify micro-aggressions, debunk myths of Black criminality, understand ally ship, and skills to effectively advocate for someone from a marginalized community.
Pilgrimages
The Beloved Community Initiative is developing Pilgrimage experiences that explore Underground Railroad sites in Iowa, that visit the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, and environmental justice sites in Northwest Iowa.
We also are able to coordinate pilgrimage opportunities that highlight reconciliation: Episcopal Relief & Development Ghana Reconciliation Pilgrimage, the Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage in Alabama, the Diocese of Atlanta’s Lynching Pilgrimage, the Trail of Souls in the Diocese of Maryland.
Space
We seek to make our space available for public story-telling around race. We invite people to share stories about the current and ongoing realities and dynamics of race and racism in Iowa, and hope to help develop and support an inter-generational writing & literacy project.
