It’s been a few months since I’ve started my new venture.

I’ve been building relationships, listening to concerns, identifying areas of need, and I think I’m beginning to catch my stride. One of the things I’m working on in my new role is establishing a social justice education program at my current institution.

Although I plan to spend some time at a writing retreat over the summer to flesh out the language a bit more, here’s a current expression of the mission and vision:

“Mission:

The mission of The Social Justice Education Program is to advance the application of GVSU’s Framework for Inclusion and Equity in an effort to support and provide transformational self and professional development of all community members as well as systems change.

Vision:
A transformed community committed to equity and inclusion, using Social Justice Education as a vehicle for intentional action and social change.”

The program website is online, although it is still in development as well. More to come on that as the summer approaches.

Intergroup Dialogue at GVSU

Of many of the projects I am advancing, an initiative that I am very excited about is building an intergroup dialogue program for students, faculty and staff on campus. Today marked the end of a two-day dialogue facilitation workshop with nearly 40 campus partners from key areas of the university.

The workshop, facilitated by my colleagues Kelly Maxwell and Roger Fisher from The Program on Intergroup Relations at The University of Michigan was the beginning of continued work to advance this important initiative.

I’ll be sharing more updates here as the work continues.

Ubuntu,

From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins-Jones, MSW, LLMSW

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