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2007 NONPROFIT
AWARDS
Honoring Exemplary Minnesota Nonprofits
 Nonprofit
Mission Award for
ANTI-RACISM INITIATIVE
This award recognizes nonprofit initiatives that combat racism in our society. The winner of this category should:
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be actively working to eliminate prejudice and racism in society,
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demonstrate a commitment to pluralism and inclusivity, and
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develop unique and thought-provoking strategies to combat racism.
And
the finalists are . . .
view a list of
previous Mission Award recipients
Finalist
Profiles
Clayton
Jackson McGhie Memorial, Inc.,
Duluth
 On
June 15, 1920, three African American men, falsely accused of raping
a white woman, were lynched in Duluth,
Minnesota
before a mob of thousands. Elias
Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie were nearly forgotten for
80 years until a group of citizens created the Clayton Jackson
McGhie Memorial (CJMM) to “bring the truth to light” and to
begin the process of healing and reconciliation.
Completion of this unique public monument was only the beginning.
Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial guides its mission to provide
opportunities for healing between racial groups in the Twin Ports
area of
Duluth,
MN, and
Superior,
WI. Run entirely by a core
of dedicated volunteers, the organization works among a largely
white population of about 110,000 to educate the community on racism
and white privilege, and partners with other organizations and
community groups to eliminate systemic racism.
CJMM challenges institutions to acknowledge that racism and
discrimination still exist and offers tools for determining their
role in undoing them. CJMM
board members have conducted educational workshops for
St. Louis
County
government, met with Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce administrators,
served on Duluth’s Human Rights Commission, and supported each other in raising
awareness of racism at work, school and worship.
Within its scope of influence, CJMM endeavors to facilitate
conversations about racism, white privilege and opportunities for
change, both between individuals and in mass media.
A major achievement was the taping and WDSE broadcast of Bringing
Truth to Light: A Community Forum on Racism Today.
CJMM distributes the DVD of this forum with a discussion
guide and makes board members available to lead discussions in
conjunction with showings.
CJMM also supports youth in furthering their education and
understanding racism’s effects on their lives.
CJMM awards a $1000 college scholarship each spring to a
graduating area senior. CJMM
also involve youth in its annual Week of Remembrance programs.
Young people bring their voices through music and poetry to
the annual observance at the Memorial.
Lastly, CJMM is working to launch a program to teach the
history of the Memorial and its relevance to current issues of
racism in public high-schools in the Duluth-Superior Area.
CJMM website: www.claytonjacksonmcghie.org
Pillsbury
House Theatre – Breaking Ice Program,
Minneapolis
Breaking Ice is a program of Pillsbury House Theatre, whose mission is to
create challenging theatre to inspire choice, change and connection.
No matter what the subject matter or the specific nature of the
audience, Breaking Ice uses the foundation of undoing racism to
inform all of its performances. Using high energy, humor, poetry,
movement, music and real life scenes, Breaking Ice custom creates
performances for each individual organization. Time spent prior to
the performance gaining an often intimate knowledge of the work
culture of each organization allows us to create tailored
performances that speak directly to each unique audience.
Pillsbury
House Theatre has created a model for post-performance facilitation
that has succeeded in actively engaging participants.
In addition to working with public institutions, businesses
and universities, Breaking Ice partners with other organizations to
develop performances that engage specific communities in dialogue
about important social issues. In
2006, the Breaking Ice company created and performed over 30 shows
for groups ranging from a
Mennonite
College
to Neighborworks National Training Institute to the
Multicultural
Development
Center.
In addition to creating adult performances, Pillsbury House Theatre has
developed a youth arm of Breaking Ice.
For the past four years, PHT has partnered with Central Weed
& Seed, Richard
R.Green
Central
Middle School
and CANDO -- the Central Neighborhood Association to create original
performances with neighborhood youth.
In 2006, students from Green
Central
School
representing Laotian, Mexican, Panamanian, African-American,
Caucasian, Sudanese, Somali and other backgrounds created The
Central Beat: El Ritmo Central, which featured their original
poetry, drumming and dialogue in Spanish and English.
Five performances for school and community groups succeeded
in sparking an intergenerational, community-wide dialogue about ways
to curb violence.
Breaking Ice reaches 8000 people annually by performing for diverse
audiences ranging from district managers at Best Buy Corporation to
non-profit advocates at the conference for the Alliance of Connected
Communities to all the incoming first year students at St. Thomas.
In these multiple settings, Breaking Ice inspires individuals
to talk openly about the fears, assumptions and prejudices that keep
people apart and brainstorm ideas to change the culture of their
workplace, school or community to create a more inclusive society.
Website
for Pillsbury House Theatre’s Breaking Ice Program: www.puc-mn.org/PillsburyHouseTheatre/tabid/231/Default.aspx
Science
Museum
of
Minnesota
The Science Museum of Minnesota, founded in 1907, is a large regional
science museum located on the banks of the Mississippi River in
downtown St. Paul. The Science
Museum's programs combine research and collection facilities, a public
science education center, extensive teacher education and school
outreach programs, and an Imax Convertible Dome Omnitheater to
provide science education to our audience of more than a million
people per year.
The Science
Museum's RACE: ARE WE SO DIFFERENT? exhibit had its world premiere in
January of 2007. The
exhibit encouraged museum visitors to explore the science, history,
and everyday impact of race. The
experience of the exhibit challenged more than 200,000 visitors to
dispel myths about race and created opportunities to deepen
knowledge about the process of oppression and
injustice. The
exhibit emphasizes that the idea of “race” has been used
historically to describe differences among people and justify
mistreatment of people and even genocide. Today, contemporary
scientific understanding of human variation is beginning to
challenge “racial” differences, and even question the very
concept of race.
RACE: Are We So Different?, developed by the American
Anthropological Association in collaboration with the Science Museum
of Minnesota, is the first national exhibition to tell the stories
of race from the biological, cultural, and historical points of
view. Combining these perspectives offers an unprecedented look at
race and racism in the United States. In
addition to the exhibit, the Science Museum of Minnesota trained
facilitators of Talking Circles so that more than 4,000 visitors had
an opportunity to explore their reactions to the exhibit in the
Native American tradition of peacekeeping circles.
Over the next 5 years the exhibit will travel to more than a
dozen U.S.
cities and will be experienced by 2.5 million people who will
benefit from a deeper understanding of race and discover how the
concept of race affects their lives and communities.
The RACE exhibit made it possible for people in our community to
begin conversations about race and explore the erroneous information
on which the entire concept of race was developed.
The exhibit served to increase the quality of conversations
about race. Perhaps most
powerful will be the effect of the exhibit on the 60,000 school-aged
people who visited. They
left the exhibit with the powerful knowledge that race is not a
biological construct but a societal one that has been used to
advance oppression and injustice.
Science Museum of Minnesota website: www.smm.org
If
you have not already done so, you
are also encouraged to view the finalists and vote for the Nonprofit
Mission Awards in the areas of:
Return
to About the Nonprofit Mission Awards
  
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