Wurzweiler Hosts Undoing Racism Workshop

On March 19th, thanks to a gift from the the Schott Fund for Social Advocacy, Wurzweiler School of Social Work was able to bring the Undoing Racism Workshop to our School. Thirty Wurzweiler faculty and administrators, and one Board of Governors member had a condensed version of the training, which usually lasts two and a half days.

The topics included power analysis, gate-keeping, learning from history, sharing culture, maintaining accountability, and defining racism. The Undoing Racism initiative is the work of The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. The Institute was founded in 1980 by Dr. Jim Dunn and Ronald Chisom as a movement to transform our society through collective action. It has been conducting workshops all across the U.S. for the last 25 years and, for the last five years, focusing on training social workers in New York City. With the support of New York social work schools, hundreds of faculty, students, practitioners and administrators have been trained.

One of the important outcome of the one-day workshop was the sense of community building among those present. The hope is that Wurzweiler can continue these discussions in future workshops. (Thanks to Dr. Carmen Hendricks for reporting this event.)