Tag Archive: racial truth and reconciliation week 2022

  1. Recap: Racial Truth & Reconciliation Week (August 2022)

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    This blog post was written by Voices intern Cat Atkinson.

    “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” – Lilla Watson, Indigenous Australian artist, scholar, and activist.

    This year marked Virginia’s 3rd Racial Truth & Reconciliation Week (RTRW); a virtual week-long conference hosted by Voices for Virginia’s Children. This year’s RTRW took place August 22-27, 2022. The mission of RTRW is to empower the voices and experiences of marginalized communities in acknowledgment of truth to promote healing, reconciliation, and justice for children and families. This week promotes the reckoning of our past to reconcile our present and future. In this blog post, we’re taking a look back at this year’s themes and workshops.

    RTRW seeks to advance policies that dismantle systems that perpetuate racial trauma, oppression, and inequity by educating Virginians, encouraging advocacy and activism, promoting equity, inclusion, and justice, and uplifting the voices, truths, and experiences of communities of color.

    As we continue to navigate divisive political landscapes and strive to promote trauma-informed healing, compassion, and justice, we intentionally selected RTRW themes to reflect the intersections of current events, history, culture, time, and policy that we find ourselves in. RTRW 2022 highlighted the themes of “Good Troublemaking: Necessary Trouble to Enact Change”, “Voices of Virginia’s Future: Highlighting Young Advocates”, and “Activists and Organizational Change: Reckoning and Reconciling Our Truth”, centering the voices and stories of youth and community members as the experts on their lived experiences in these topics.

    “Our kids were born for this time.” – Ann Zweckbronner, Parenting an Activist

    Over the course of the week, we had 19 workshops, 31 presenters, and 586 registrants from 29 states and Canada! RTRW went international! We had attendees from state agencies, non-profit organizations, community-based organizations, students, youth, parents, and more. 95% of those polled were satisfied with the programs and 98% of those polled thought the content was relevant to their work. We have been celebrating the community that RTRW has created by continuing to engage with repeat attendees over the years.

    Graphic featuring the words Racial Truth and Reconciliation Week 2022 followed by four purple circles each containing text. The first says 19 workshops. The second says 2,171 registrations. The third says 31 presenters. and the last one says 586 registrants. Followed by a grey bar containing the racial truth and reconciliation logo at the bottom.A graphic that says Racial Truth and Reconciliation Week 2022 at the top followed by the words 29 u.s. states participated and Canada and an icon of the globe. At the bottom there is a grey bar with the RTR logo in the center.
    The workshops this year highlighted the importance of community partnership and the collective liberation of the communities we uplift through advocacy. We engaged in conversation about DEIJ (diversity, equity, inclusion and justice) within organizations and communities, we discussed the importance of understanding intersectionality, how to support and encourage social justice advocacy within youth and cause “good trouble” within our social system to bring about radical change. There was collective storytelling, intentional self-reflection, engagement with new lenses of focus, and a buzz of energy from attendees and organizers to take this work back to their own spaces. In one week, we got to see the power of community engagement in mobilization for radical change.

    Let us continue to work together:

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    • Legislative Advocacy Guide: This comprehensive guide describes advocacy through the Virginia legislative process and gives specific instructions on how to communicate with elected officials.
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