GET TO KNOW VACV

Our work emanates from a deep desire for justice, shared across our board and staff. We are guided by principles and values that sustain us during challenging times. Principles and values you may also share. 

Getting to Know Us: Centering Humanity, Practicing Joy

At Virginia Community Voice, we listen to our staff, RVA Thrives members, Blueprint clients, board, and broader Southside community when making decisions, rather than follow the status quo. We seek to understand the vision of people, before trying to follow the vision of institutions.  **By institutions we mean government, schools, churches and faith groups, hospitals, universities, banks, corporations, etc.**

Not because the vision of institutions is bad or wrong, but many institutions in our country, and state, have been designed and led by small groups of powerful people who share similar identities and life experiences, with long histories of causing harm to minorities and other marginalized groups.

Even nonprofits and philanthropic organizations trying to “do good” still follow harmful practices rooted in colonialism and capitalism. Despite an increasingly diverse population, most nonprofits are:

  • white-led, adhering to white cultural norms in the workplace

  • defer to and elevate male leadership, particularly as organization size and budget grow 

  • emphasize productivity and efficiency from workers

  • maintain power through division and control

Sadly, this often leads to burnout and high rates of turnover among staff. Until nonprofits and philanthropy heal deeper cultural wounds and practices, efforts to address gaps through DEI programs or progressive hiring practices won’t work.

That’s one of the reasons why we have tried—from the start—to create a workplace and organizational culture that goes against the grain, supporting and fostering our shared humanity.

Do we get it right every day? Certainly not. But we have leaders who are not afraid to admit mistakes, staff who give each other a lot of grace, opportunities to laugh and cry and celebrate together, and a deep shared commitment to justice.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

We put people first and invest in the health and well-being of our staff. To that end, we:

  • Pay 100% of the health insurance premium for staff who qualify

  • Follow a mental-health policy written by staff

  • Take quarterly rest breaks when staff engage in a healing retreat or social gathering

  • Offer work from home, flexible schedules, unlimited PTO, and kids always welcome!

We invite people to be their full selves at work: As a group of humans with many different intersecting identities, we make space for people to express themselves, sharing about their personal lives and lived experiences in whatever way they feel is appropriate and comfortable.

Since our founding in 2019, we’ve received so many questions about how we create a human-centered workplace that recently our Community Voice Blueprint team designed an 8-week cohort based learning opportunity on this very topic—learn more here!

We invite you to spend some time reflecting on what human centered means in your own life, workplace, or the institutions you engage with.

Some guiding questions for you:

  • Within my sphere of influence, how can I act in ways that are more centered around our shared humanity? 

  • How might I make space for people to be their full selves in my workplace, school, home, or faith group?

  • How do I practice joy? How can I support others in practicing joy?

We balance accountability & trust:

Recently we engaged in team and organization-wide discussions about accountability and trust, asking each team to define what they need to feel emotionally, and physically safe in the workplace and develop norms to support each other’s safety. We also created organizational norms that define how we communicate, resolve conflict, stay present in a remote / virtual work environment, and respect privacy including that of community members. All staff were involved in creating these norms and had several opportunities to revise them before signing.

We practice JOY:

Yep, you heard it. We’re not afraid of it! At every staff meeting, we are invited to share our work-related updates, and one thing that is bringing us joy that week. To quote Valarie Kaur again, “Joy will power your courage.” As people fighting for liberation, we have learned that we must breathe in equal measure to the pushing, and be joyful in equal measure to the grief, if we are to sustain ourselves in this work.

Getting to Know Us: Centering Community

Since we started RVA Thrives in 2017, we have been committed to centering the expertise and experience of the neighbors directly impacted by our work. This includes any resident in South Richmond, with a specific focus on 10 neighborhoods along the Richmond Highway Corridor, from the James River down to Walmsley Boulevard.

How do we define Community? There are about 19,000 people living in this part of Richmond, and we estimate that the work we do with a core group of 150 neighbors has a ripple effect across the community, benefiting thousands of others. Since the 1950s, the Southside has been a predominantly Black community, however in recent years, the Black population has started to decline, as more white residents have moved to the Southside. Over the past 20 years the Hispanic population has grown, and yet we believe current census data actually undercounts the true size of the Latine population here. Our focus is on people whose voices have historically been marginalized, underrepresented in politics, and excluded from decision-making. In Virginia the voices that have been legally and culturally excluded from public decision-making are those of minority groups, namely Black, Indigenous and other people of color, immigrant and LGBTQIA groups, etc., while the voices of white residents and communities have been centered.

That’s why, in our work in South Richmond we center and amplify the voices of minority groups, with a focus on Black and Latine neighbors, listening to their stories, perspectives and experiences.

How do we remain true to our value of being community-centered?

Prioritize Shared Interests: Yes, there are outstanding individual leaders in South Richmond, and we seek out people with a discernible following to join RVA Thrives. But, we don’t need a heroic individual to save a community, because everyone has superpowers needed in this fight. Our practice is to listen to individuals, identify common themes and issues, and connect groups of people around those common issues. From there, we build out solutions and take collective action in ways that represent the vision and voice of all involved. We think this method works so well we wrote a guide to it! Check out our Community Voice Blueprint guide to equitable engagement here.

Community-driven Fundraising: Even when it comes to resource development, we have made it clear that our priority will always be the community, a shift from the traditional “donor-centric” fundraising model. Our Courageous Fundraising Principles explain why, and are a statement of how we honor all investments in our work equally – including time and money.

Advocate for Community Vision in Decision-Making: In advocacy campaigns around housing affordability we want the concerns of local residents to be weighed equally alongside the concerns of political leaders and commercial developers. In fact, we created a tool to make it easier for neighbors to communicate their vision for development projects with decision-makers, called the Equitable Development Scorecard. When we push for inclusion of neighbor voice in decision making about the built and natural environment, we are repairing decision-making practices here in Virginia over the past 400+ years that excluded Black, Latine and other people of color and marginalized groups.

We invite you to spend some time with these resources, reflecting on what community-centric means in your own life, workplace, or the institutions you engage with.

Some guiding questions for you:

  • Whose voice and vision tends to be centered in the groups you’re a part of? Why, and to what end? What keeps that from changing?

  • What makes you feel like you belong in the groups you’re part of? Do you feel like your voice is heard?

  • What changes would you like to see within the groups you’re part of, so that they are more community-centric?

Getting to Know Us: Building and Exercising People Power

Our RVA Thrives team at Virginia Community Voice, works to equitably engage black and brown Southside residents to change their communities. When we listen to them, we hear their stories of hurt, grief and pain. Our staff listen to neighbors in one-on-one conversations and we bring them together to share their concerns with each other. Bringing neighbors together reminds them that they are not alone in what they’re going through, which strengthens our community. Along the way, we begin to understand the values they hold dear within their experiences. We cannot hold the institutions accountable that caused these stories of injustice solely based on those values because their priorities run counter to ours. We must build power in order to successfully hold them accountable.

VACV’s definition of power:  

Many of us have negative gut reactions to the term power. It assumes responsibility. Many of us think we’re not qualified to have power. We often see politicians and business leaders abuse their power and exploit the powerless. We define power as the ability to help or to hurt others. With this definition we need to recognize that power is simply a tool that is neither negative or positive. At the same time, our staff work very intentionally with each neighbor to understand their values to ensure we’re exercising our power positively. We work with neighbors to use their power to build communities they want to see with values rooted in equity, community and liberation.


Why is power important?

Power recognizes power. What do we mean by that? Think of a community problem that you are passionate about and you have a proven solution that will fix it and you need the Governor of Virginia to enact it. How likely do you think you’ll get to talk to him? If you were another governor or the president or CEO of a Fortune 500 company do you stand a better chance? The answer is, unfortunately, yes. Power is relational and powerful people and institutions often have relationships based only on power. This is because they have the ability to offer each other something that the other does not, usually in the way of funding or granting authority. Power has two sources: organized money and organized people. Institutions use the power of organized money to relate to each other. Virginia Community Voice’s budget will never be as large, for example, as Richmond City. We can’t organize around competing with their budget. We can however, organize our people so that we can be heard, taken seriously and negotiate with those in power so that we can build the community that our neighbors want to see. What our neighbors offer those in power is legitimacy, which can lead to votes, endorsements and donations and entry to our neighborhood meetings and homes. You can’t put a price on that!

How does VACV build and exercise people power?

Teaching Community Organizing Skills: Neighbors that get involved in our work learn the foundations of building people power. We’re excited to launch our South Richmond Leadership Academy in February which will become our main pipeline to identify and train Southside neighbors to be equitable leaders, community organizing and on-board them to our working groups. Neighbors who complete the program are also encouraged to find leadership opportunities in broader Richmond.

Holding Developers Accountable: Our Housing Working Group developed the Equitable Development Scorecard as a tool to hold developers accountable to community priorities for development as a means to stop the displacement of our long-term residents. We are currently building more people power so that this tool is observed within the City of Richmond’s community development planning process. We have work to do but we’re excited that our tool is included in Mayor Danny Avula’s Affordable Housing Plan (page 7).

Combining Design with Implementation: Our equitable engagement in the community often starts with the intention “something needs to change”. In other words, neighbors are at the forefront of design and implementation. Next year we will be bringing together Southside residents to design Broad Rock Creek Park. Once those designs are complete, they will be trained to communicate and discuss ideas with City of Richmond staff and City Councilors to push our designs forward.

We invite you to spend some time with these resources, reflecting on what power means to you and how you might engage with power.

Some guiding questions for you:

How does our definition of “power” sit with you?

What changes do you want to make in your community? What do you think it will take?

If you feel like you are “powerful”, how are you/could you share your power with those who are not? (joining the newsletter is one way to share your power!)