The Race to Equity Project is releasing its Roadmap to Equity: A Two Generation Approach to Reducing Racial Disparities in Dane County. The Roadmap to Equity is a response to the data on the county’s severe racial disparities first identified in the Race to Equity Baseline Report released in October of 2013. The Roadmap is organized around the broad theme of “Supporting More Parents to Succeed in Today’s Economy; Preparing More Young People to Succeed in Tomorrow’s World.” It calls upon all sectors of the community to work toward three overarching and inter-related goals:
1) Significantly increase the employment, income, and wealth of Dane County’s low-income families of color.
2) Expand and improve supports for low-income working families of color to better enable them to balance the twin challenges of parenting and success on the job.
3) Expand and improve supports for children and youth of color to assure that a far larger percentage of them meet early childhood developmental milestones, enter kindergarten ready to learn, and succeed throughout their school careers.
The Roadmap to Equity is designed to deepen community agreement around key racial justice progress goals, and encourage commitment to the action steps needed to achieve those goals by 2020. The hope is that the Roadmap will reinforce and complement the planning and action work already being advanced by Justified Anger, the United Way, Centro Hispano, Young, Gifted and Black/Freedom Inc., Madison Metropolitan School District, City and County government as well as other key organizations in the county.
“Our intent is to accelerate the existing momentum for change by tying it to clear goals, concrete actions and measurable progress indicators — benchmarks that can hold all of us more accountable,” said Erica Nelson, Race to Equity Project Director. In the months ahead, the Race to Equity team will be seeking feedback around the Roadmap’s strategies and goals from a wide range of community, business, philanthropic, service provider, and public sector stakeholders.
Race to Equity (R2E) is a project of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. The goal of the Race to Equity Project is to build a fairer, more just and thriving community by narrowing the gaps in the opportunities and outcomes between families of color and the larger community in Dane County.
More information about the project and the initiatives list can be found at www.racetoequity.net
