This past November, Education Opens Doors joined over one thousand community activists and leaders across the country at the National Facing Race Conference, the largest multiracial, multi-generational conference for racial justice advocates. As a young education nonprofit predominantly serving students of color in the Dallas area, our organization is eager to learn from the work that both young and seasoned community leaders around the nation are doing and better understand the best practices for serving the students we work with.

As one may expect with a conference full of bold, courageous, and visionary thinkers, there were many take-aways from Facing Race. The conference challenged our organization to think about what role we have in advancing racial equity in Dallas and across the schools, educators, and students we reach. We believe that we are helping to create a road map and pathway for all students to reach their full potential, regardless of their socioeconomic background and identity. Yet, as a young and growing organization, we definitely have more to learn about being more direct, bold, and intentional in how we advocate for a racially equitable community in which our students will thrive.

As a result of the conference, Education Opens Doors is committed to re-evaluating the work that we do and the program that we put forth in the community through a lens of racial equity. As a data and evaluation driven organization, our program is constantly adapting and changing to the needs of our community, and we look forward to employing some of the tools we gained from the conference, such as the Racial Equity Impact Assessment Toolkit from the Applied Research Center (also known as Race Forward). As one of the few middle school, college knowledge programs in a traditional school setting, we are charged with both the challenge and opportunity to package and deliver our program through a racially conscious and racially equitable lens.

We thank all those who organized and partnered in convening the National Facing Race conference in Dallas. We are so grateful to be welcomed in the Facing Race community and look forward to growing in this movement with our partners.

Amy Tran
Impact Manager
Education Opens Doors

Dallas Faces Race is the beginning of a sustainable forum on race in Dallas. The forum will bring together organizations to actively build their capacity to address racial equity and make change. If you are interested in joining in on the conversation, you can learn more by following this link. A full calendar of events, including an upcoming partner event this Friday, January 16th, can be found here.