The YWCA Madison has announced that they are inviting submissions for workshop proposals for the 2019 Racial Justice Summit, a leading regional, multiracial gathering on racial justice. This year’s event, with the theme “Transforming Our Future,” will take place Oct. 15-16 at Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center.
YWCA Madison’s invitation for participants is to connect with legacies of resilience, resistance and co-liberation of individuals and communities throughout history as co-inspiration to re-imagine our lives and communities from this present-forward.
Each year, the YWCA Madison hosts a Racial Justice Summit that brings together people and organizations committed to learning about institutional racism as well as to build an ongoing practice of racial justice. We convene nationally-known keynote speakers and researchers, in addition to local experts and advocates as presenters for an audience of over 800 participants. The Summit provides a platform for community dialogue and action-envisioning for racial justice in an environment that encourages learning from and supporting each other for this common imperative in our personal lives, as well as organizational roles.
This year, YWCA Madison is inviting presenters to submit workshops that engage a holistic approach which would speak to the root causes, shifting power, and advancing of racial equity at the self, interpersonal, institutional, cultural, and structural levels across our communities and organizations. The organization is encouraging presenters to integrate skill building in their workshop proposals so that participants can practice enacting one’s own understanding of the nature and impact of the system of racial inequity, as well as their own personal and organizational spheres of influence.
Up to 25 workshops will be featured at the Racial Justice Summit. Due to the limited number of workshops, growing interest and attendance, we expect the workshop selection process to be very competitive. We encourage early submission of workshop proposals to give us ample time to review them.
Breakout sessions at the Racial Justice Summit will focus on transforming our future through themes around Community Organizing, Activism, Organizational Development and Advocacy (with an emphasis on Skill Building), Collective and Holistic Dismantling of the System of White Supremacy and Whiteness, Envisioning Our Liberated Future and Bodies of Knowledge & Practices of Healing, Liberation and Resistance (Individual and Collective).
Nationally renowned keynote Presenters and institute leaders already confirmed for this year’s summit are Dr. Bettina Love, Heather Hackman, Annahid Dashgart and Climbing Poetree.
For more information, visit the website at www.ywcamadison.org/what-were-doing/race-gender-equity/racial-justice-summit/, or contact Gery Paredes Vasquez at [email protected].
