ALA announces participants in Racial Healing Circle workshop with AAC&U

Forty-two library workers and educators have been selected to participate in a two-day workshop to learn how to lead Racial Healing Circles, a transformative facilitation process, championed by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, that strives to help communities engage with storytelling, deep listening and relationship building that can support healing from the effects of racism.

The Preparation Workshop for New Racial Healing Circle Practitioners is an offering of the American Library Association (ALA), presented in cooperation with the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U. It will take place in Chicago on March 21 and 22.

View the list of participants.

Participants were selected through a competitive application process. Eligibility for this workshop, the first of its kind for ALA, was limited to individuals who have had prior experience with Racial Healing Circles, typically through ALA’s Great Stories Club series on Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation or at a prior ALA conference program.

Participating library workers will receive a $400 stipend to offset travel expenses, up to three nights’ lodging, and complimentary registration for the two-day workshop including support materials and meals.

Racial Healing Circles help participants recognize our common humanity, acknowledge the truth of past wrongs, and build the authentic relationships necessary to begin transforming communities and shifting our national discourse. To learn more about the Kellogg Foundation’s Racial Healing Circle methodology, see “Restoring to Wholeness.”

This workshop is being offered as part of Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT), the Kellogg Foundation’s comprehensive, national and community-based process to plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change, and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism. TRHT seeks to unearth and jettison the deeply held, and often unconscious, beliefs created by racism – the main one being the belief in a “hierarchy of human value.”

ALA is one of the 100 voluntary National Partner Organizations, along with 44 scholars, that participated in the 2016 TRHT design phase. More information about the Kellogg Foundation's TRHT efforts and a downloadable copy of the TRHT Implementation Guidebook are available online at https://healourcommunities.org/.

About the American Library Association

The American Library Association is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with approximately 55,000 members in academic, public, school, government and special libraries. The mission of the American Library Association is to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.