Our mission at CareerWise is based on our belief we can improve outcomes for young people by changing our systems of education and talent development.  The staff and leadership at CareerWise are committed to becoming an actively anti-racist organization to intentionally build towards racial equity, both internally and externally. As acknowledged last week in this statement, we know we have some work to do.

Over the past year, CareerWise has been on a journey of learning and unlearning in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We have engaged with organizations like Promise 54 and Joyful Equity (a partnership between Restorative Practice NYC and True North EDI ) to help us along this journey. As a staff, we’ve also been reading and discussing books like “How to be an Anti-racist” by Ibram X. Kendi and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. There have been trainings and tough conversations, but each individual staff member has leaned in and is actively working toward being anti-racist. 

For the remainder of 2020, we are focused on actively reviewing our program and policies to move towards being an anti-racist organization. Below are a few ways we are doing that: 

• Encouraging ourselves and our partner stakeholders to have difficult and uncomfortable conversations about racism and other inequities when necessary and when we see these inequities occur in order to advance racial justice and equity and make impactful changes for the communities we support.
• Create a culture of checking ourselves as teams, individuals, and an organization as a whole for exclusive, white supremacist, and paternalistic tendencies, while also intentionally emphasizing and seeking out perspectives of oppressed groups/individuals.
• We are committed to reviewing our student recruitment process to make sure we are using anti-racist practices.
• We are committed to actively engaging businesses with DEI practices in place.
• Develop the structure to better enable a diverse feedback loop from apprentices through representation on the apprentice council and other means.

Now is the time for us to collectively step forward as a nation to change systems of oppression in our country. It will be hard work, but we are committed to doing our part. 

Thank you to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of this work.