DAYTON, Ohio—Two weeks after George Floyd’s death, many Americans are working to find ways to better educate themselves about the racial injustices that occur in our country. A local YWCA is making sure the community has those resources through a 21-day challenge.
What You Need To Know
- The YWCA of Dayton is hosting a 21-day racial equality and social justice challenge
- The challenge sends daily emails with prompts and resources
- The challenge is free and starts June 19
The YWCA’s mission is to end racism and empower women. And while it’s a conversation that happens everyday there, they knew it needed to continue outside of their walls.
“We know that every single day in our country there are individuals who are dying because of racist policies and practices whether we know their names or not,” Sarah Wolf-Knight the grant and advocacy manager at the YWCA of Dayton said.
That’s when Wolf-Knight and her colleagues decided to coordinate a 21-day racial equality and social justice challenge.
“It’s this wonderful tool that has people walking though different topics and exercises around racial equity issues over the course of 21 days,” she said. “Kind of based off that adage that it takes 21 days to build a habit and we’re trying to build better habits about being anti-racist citizens in our society.”
While a 21-day challenge has already occurred at the YWCA of Dayton this year, they knew they had to do it again to get resources out to the community while so many people are talking about these issues.
“Even though this is a really difficult moment for our country, there are so many people that are engaged and want to do this work with us,” Wolf-Knight said.
The challenge is free for anyone to join. The YWCA will send you a daily email with prompts and resources on different themes and topics. Wolf-Knight says they’ve seen people from all across the state sign up already.
“We want to have tools for them and we also want to make sure those tools are localized because we know that we have problems in our own community that are unique and have unique solutions,” she said.
1200 people have already signed up for the challenge which starts June 19. That’s already more people that did the challenge earlier this year. Wolf-Knight says it’s been overwhelming to see so many people want to better educate themselves through the program.
“Every single person that signed up and given us feedback has said they’ve learned something new that it’s sparked conversations,” Wolf-Knight said. “And so if you feel like you have never done any of his work before, this is brand new for you, it’s a really safe way to get involved.”
