Sep 15, 2017

For over 16 years, Diversity Awareness Partnership (DAP) has been the region’s catalyst to increase awareness, facilitate engagement and provide education about diversity and inclusion. In 2014, following the death of Michael Brown and the ensuing events in Ferguson, we launched our series of free community events called Listen. Talk. Learn: Dialoguing Across Difference. These events help strengthen our community’s ability to dialogue about race relations by facilitating important and difficult discussions on race, unconscious bias, and our lived experiences.

In the wake of the Stockley verdict, it is imperative that we focus on our threefold mission, and understand each other better to move toward a more inclusive and just country for all. Our focus on productive dialogue strengthens relationships, while unproductive debates weaken our region.

After last month’s violent tragedy in Charlottesville, DAP facilitated additional Listen. Talk. Learn. events throughout our region in order for the community to process the unfolding and dynamic changes in conversations about race. These events were featured on St. Louis Public Radio’s September 5 We Live Here podcast. We will offer several of these free events monthly for the remainder of 2017. Please follow Diversity Awareness Partnership via email, Facebook, and Twitter for information on these upcoming events.

In times such as these, Diversity Awareness Partnership is even more committed to our mission, and to our vision of inclusive communities where diversity is respected and embraced, and equity is the norm. In the face of injustice, it is appropriate to take action. DAP provides a setting where feelings are expressed and an opportunity to understand these feelings. As we continue to serve our region and beyond, we maintain hope that the values of empathy and understanding will guide us as we engage in difficult dialogue that bends the arc of history toward justice.

DAP_Debate vs dialogue guidelines