CLIENT PARTNER:
Georgia Family Connection Partnership (GaFCP)
Project Description:
HTI worked with the organization to transform its culture and practices to an equity-centered framework which has supported their DEI Team to make a positive impact on the organization as a whole and the communities they serve. After five years of doing that type of work, we continue to support their equity team as well as provide coaching to the management team. HTI services and supports include leadership coaching, professional learning to build shared knowledge of the staff, establishment & training of an in-house Equity Facilitation Team and the creation of an Equity Toolkit. The toolkit includes a set of facilitator guides for small groups to explore issues of race and equity using film/video, text or outings; a series of curated assessment tools to assess individual, organizational and community-level readiness, progress and impact of equity-centered knowledge, actions and beliefs; and additional resources. (We have executed 7 contracts with this organization.)
SERVICES PROVIDED:
- Transformative Facilitation
- Leadership Development & Coaching
“I think I can speak for the organization as a whole in saying that it’s been enlightening. How to do our better our jobs better and our mission better. So full and rich, more meaningful.
I mean, our mission, we cannot achieve our mission nor our vision if we had not embarked on this work. And, you know, so it’s, it’s been what has helped us do our jobs better and approach them better, understand the issues better. And therefore hopefully have a greater impact.”
– Gaye Smith
Executive Director
Team
“HTI came on the scene when we were very early in the [DEI] journey and made it palatable, not as overwhelming and as daunting of a task as we thought it would be. It’s a daunting task, but they helped us see that it was manageable and that it could be done. So building the capacity for us to understand the role of leadership, buy-in, and how leadership support influenced the buy-in of the rest of the organization, the importance of self-reflection as an organization, and the importance of understanding how each of us shows up individually and how that impacts us as an organization.
HTI is a change agent; it helped change the way we think, and the way we see. I think about one of my new favorite terms is ethos. How we operate, what our culture is, and “how we be”. I thought that was one of those most outstanding things; The idea of blending compassion, creativity, and lived experiences, that’s important, and how that impacts the way we do the work.
They helped us see a lot of linkages, some people feel like you have to be this compassionate person to talk about this topic of race, equity, and inclusion. And then other people go, well, it’s more if we’re gonna use data, let’s just do data, and let’s be logical about it. But you’ve shown us a way that we can blend all of that while being ourselves and using our authentic skills gifts and talents to help us make this impact and be able to share with communities, the work to improve the disparities or improve the outcomes, we have to be able to tell the stories behind the data if we’re going to continue to be a data-led organization. HTI has been a crucial partner in helping us be able to do those things and do them effectively. We’ve seen the results of how they came in with a way that was a more relatable style and it didn’t have to be hard.
Hearing it from HTI’s perspective and growing from the skills that they’ve taught us, we’ve learned that we have to listen and be graceful. Those tenants of courageous conversations, but also having those additional agreements to help us set the tone for how the conversations move have been life-altering and personal.”
– Sonya Hope
Regional Manager/Team Leader of Race, Equity and Inclusion