Communities of Practice

Facilitating Collective Learning & Action

Equity work is best done in community: learning in public, holding ourselves and each other accountable, trying new approaches and working through complex challenges collectively. Together we can reimagine and create equitable systems and structures that challenge and disrupt the status quo. 

Addressing inequity is a complex problem, and with a complex problem, there are no easy answers or best practices that will solve the problem. A Community of Practice can be an effective structure for inquiry and taking collective action toward shared outcomes. 

The National Equity Project can support you to develop meaningful relationships with others in a learning community, to contribute to the well-being and sustainability of people as they come together to do shared work, and foster greater liberatory collaboration in developing partnerships with families and communities.

Outcomes & Impacts

Too often change initiatives only focus on taking action, not on learning and adjusting strategies based on the impact of the actions. While specific goals and outcomes are context specific, some common aims for our Community of Practice facilitation include:

• Building shared language, understanding, and increased will, skill, and knowledge to identify, disrupt, and address inequities in participants’ efforts;

• Increased capacity of members to use a racial equity and systems thinking lens to complex organizational leadership and cross-institutional challenges;

• Influencing shifts in members’ respective approaches, intentions, communications, and/or goals related to equity

• Cultivate relationships, incorporate processes, and utilize frameworks to develop a meaningful, authentic and robust learning community in which a commitment to learning, being and doing are expected; 

• Make structural change by interrupting existing institutional dynamics/approaches through the formation of an intentional, change-centric community of practice.