Our Commitment to Racial Equity, Diversity + Inclusion
ABOUT CTV
Carry the Vision (CTV) is committed to transforming our larger community by co-creating healing communities that address the needs of people suffering from life’s challenges and ensuring racial equity is center to all our work. CTV’s goal has been to bring diverse groups together to listen deeply not only to the struggles people face but also for the solutions that already exist in the ideas and talents of individuals and their communities.
Our vision includes inclusive economic and social well-being that advances racial and gender equality. This initiative places an intentional focus on efforts to dismantle systemic racism that keeps communities of color disproportionally underserved, under-resourced, targeted, and marginalized. We seek funding strategies, programs, and solutions that support communities color, immigrants, formally incarcerated, the unhoused, those experiencing mental health and recovery challenges, women, children, and youth. We believe healing is possible when in partnership with community; in coordination with local government; and in collaboration with local partner organizations that creates resilience and supports empowerment in disadvantaged communities.
MISSION: Co-creating compassionate communities one person at a time.
VISION: Lives are transformed through connected, caring, and compassionate communities.
NONPROFIT RACIAL EQUITY PLEDGE
Silicon Valley is home to deep and persistent economic and racial disparities that carry devastating consequences to Black, indigenous, and people of color. Nonprofit organizations have a responsibility and opportunity to work with our communities to fight systemic racism in our organizations and in our governmental, philanthropic, and private sector partners.
Despite years of prosperity, income inequality in Silicon Valley is now at a historic high, with 13% of households holding more than 74% of the region’s wealth. Meanwhile communities of color are hit the hardest by persistent poverty, and negative health and education outcomes. Public policy decisions have only exacerbated gentrification and displacement of households of color. The disparate health and economic impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color are a profound illustration of the devastating cost of systemic racism.
These inequities are rooted in racist and discriminatory legal and institutional structures—historic and current—as well as in the racial biases that still exist in our families, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods. These and similar structures and systems of oppression also disadvantage indigenous people, immigrants and other people of color, women, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ community; these structures and systems of oppression have compounded negative effects for Black lives.
As members of this community and as nonprofit leaders, we both recognize these inequities and commit to action for racial justice. We pledge to take anti-racist stances in our community, and to incorporate core values of racial equity, inclusion, and diversity in our organizations.
THEREFORE, AS CHANGE AGENTS, WE COMMIT TO:
Support voices from the communities we serve to share power and resources.
Actively support the movement to transform the systems that perpetuate racial inequities.
Develop clear and transparent objectives and measures of progress toward racial equity, while ensuring those goals are informed by and accountable to affected members of our community.
Condemn public and private-sector policies that disadvantage members of our community based on race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, documentation status, socioeconomic status, educational attainment, veteran status, age, disability, and arbitrary bases.
AS NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS AND SERVANT LEADERS WORKING WITHIN SUCH ORGANIZATIONS, WE COMMIT TO:
Prioritize racial equity work. Ensure that equity goals and responsibilities within the organization are clearly incorporated into work plans and budgets at all levels.
Center the perspectives and lived experience of people of color and oppressed communities in decision making in our organization’s operations, programs, and services, recognizing that staff may have more societal power than those we pledge to serve.
Create and maintain a workforce and leadership that is racially diverse, reflective of the community we work with, and culturally responsive.
Promote inclusion within our organization by fostering a culture where the histories and life experiences are acknowledged and valued.
Advance workplace equity through professional development, inclusive decision making, and transparency for staff at all levels.
Examine whether our organization is perpetuating inequities by only focusing on the consequences of inequality versus addressing root causes.
Develop anti-racist leadership of employees, board members, and volunteers.
Collaborate with other organizations and cross-sector allies to build the capacity of communities of color and organizations led by these communities to achieve an equitable and thriving community together.
Support and hold each other accountable in living out the tenets of this pledge.