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MANAUS’s Equity Action Program recently received a major grant from the Colorado Health Foundation. With this support, EAP now hopes to reach new heights in its efforts to build a more equitable and inclusive future.
Launched by MANAUS in early 2021, the EAP began as a seven-week organizational training program on diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism initiatives. EAP Manager Bryan Alvarez-Terrazas said the project served more than 150 people from 32 different organizations in Aspen and Parachute through its training program.
“It’s really cool to see our alumni come from schools, municipalities, different nonprofits, everything from health care to environmental work,” Alvarez-Terrazas said. “There’s a wide range of people with different areas of expertise and areas of focus, and I hope this movement continues to move forward to make sure these organizations continue to invest in the individual work and organizational work that really builds a more inclusive and equitable region.”
To ensure continued DEI work through these trainings, the EAP began by focusing on supporting the existing alumni network, Alvarez-Terrazas explained, adding that the training portion of the EAP will end after the current and final cohort of trainees for now.
“We’re at this pivotal moment where instead of continuing to expand our connections to more organizations and more individuals, we want to start looking at how support for our existing alumni network will go forward,” Alvarez-Terrazas said. Say.
Funds received from the Colorado Health Foundation — totaling $240,000 — will be used in part to support EAP’s alumni network. Funding will also be allocated to EAP’s Equity Speaker series, Alvarez-Terrazas said. The manager went on to explain how the foundation’s grant will be broken down to benefit EAP’s four main initiatives in 2023.
The first, Alvarez-Terrazas said, is to support alumni networking events that give EAP-trained community members the opportunity to connect with each other and continue to develop and implement their personal and organizational equity work.
Next year, EAP is also committed to providing language justice grants to all of its alumni organizations so that these various types of organizations can promote translation and interpretation services and — or have them work with consultants to develop language justice programs.
Another initiative for which EAP has received grants involves an equity workshop planned for next spring.
The fourth initiative Alvarez-Terrazas mentioned has to do with the continuation and development of the Equity Speaker Series — which launched last spring and is held in partnership with the Willits Arts Campus.
Alvarez-Terrazas explained that as EAP’s seven-week training sessions become more organization-focused, the speaker series began with the aim of impacting the entire community and offering everyone a free opportunity to engage in conversations around equity.
“We have variations in terms of different DEI experts and performers, and in terms of presentation styles and themes,” Alvarez-Terrazas said. “We used to have a slam poet, more of an academic presentation – and then we also had a screening of Holly.” …We wanted to make sure we brought different lived experiences into the series and into the space.
Joining the diverse line-up of speakers for tonight’s discussion at TACAW is Colorado-based artist and host Assétou Xango. Xango, known as the “Dark Goddess Poet,” identifies herself as a black pansexual polygamous, genderqueer woman.
They appeared on HBO’s “Brave New Voices” in 2010 and are 2021 Fellows of the American Academy of Poets Laureate, among other honors. Xango’s work removes binary and division through storytelling.
For tonight’s event at TACAW—starting at 6:30 p.m., free—Xango will give a poetry reading and give a talk on how to be an ally in DEI’s work—especially how to get over the odds, Alvarez-Terrazas explained, with Dialogue in a way that contributes to a more inclusive and equitable world.
“This speaking engagement covers a topic that we haven’t had the opportunity to explore in depth,” they said. “So I want to make sure that we bring different perspectives and different lived experiences into the collection and the space, and make those different themes and mediums available to the public.”
Alvarez-Terrazas added that after Xango’s presentation tonight, the Equity Speaker series will resume around early 2023, and EAP will continue to work hard to grow a more equitable community.
For more information on EAP or the loudspeaker series, please visit manaus.org.
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