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Diversity Awareness

CommonUnity

CommonUnity is completing a video project that celebrates community differences while honoring its traditions as a rich, vibrant, healthy Upstate of South Carolina.  Every day hundreds of individuals and organizations participate in activities that represent a myriad of ideas and activities which demonstrate the diversity of our communities.  Through this project, the group will demonstrate how the words “acknowledge,” “respect” and “engage” can add significant strength and value to the community.

Community Action Awareness Programs (CAAP)

CAAP members developed a model for addressing diversity from within individual communities. Using the Orangeburg community for the pilot program, CAAP brought together a dozen community leaders, representing a wide array of issues including economic development, education, local politics, healthcare, finance and business. These community leaders were given background materials and led into a discussion on diversity.

Community Connections

Community Connections is a project that serves to leverage the connections of our group members to serve and benefit a need of a Charleston Promise Neighborhood school. Charleston Promise Neighborhood is an innovative nonprofit established in 2010 that aims to break the cycle of poverty in specifically identified neighborhoods in Charleston.  Four elementary schools are served, and they are the focus of Community Connections.

Con-Nection

Con-Nection team members aimed to address the issue of reintegration for ex-convicts into the community in the Central Savannah Region Area. After the recent closing of the Aiken Community Outreach Ministry, many of these citizens stopped receiving help from the community and as such, struggled to gain employment and to meet basic living needs.  The Con-Nection team members interviewed ex-convicts who were willing to share their struggles with the media.

C.O.P.S. - Changing Our Perspectives

The headlines are rife with stories of violent encounters between law enforcement and the African American community.  C.O.P.S. quickly saw an opportunity (duty may better describe the team’s feelings) to address this disturbing trend while it was in the forefront of everyone’s thoughts. This group believes one way to curtail the violence is to change the perspectives of law enforcement officers and middle school youth of color by having them engage in meaningful activities together. 

CORE: Creating Opportunities and Recognizing Excellence

C.O.R.E. desires to recognize high school students who inspire others because they have overcome obstacles in their lives.  To accomplish this, the group has partnered with Carolina and Greenville High Schools in Greenville, South Carolina.  Based on criteria established by the group, each school will select two students from their schools—one male and one female—to receive the “DLI   C.O.R.E.

CrashCourse

CrashCourse group members developed a project which aims to create an environment that will help spark open dialogue about diversity issues in South Carolina among young professionals, build a network among the participants, and provide the “Crash Course” tools to participants, in hopes they will continue the legacy within their organizations.

CRASHToGather

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” - Martin Luther King, Jr. As our society evolves, we are slowly separating ourselves from each other, creating environments of misunderstanding, intolerance, and exclusion. DIVERSITY DINING is about giving people an opportunity to come together, get to know one another, and identify, question, and cross the social boundaries that separate us.

The Council

Challenge Day is a unique experience through which students and community leaders become more meaningfully engaged in making campus life safer, creating a positive learning environment and establishing better communications among students and their teachers. It achieves its goals through a daylong sequence of powerful, high-energy exercises and reflections in which participants talk about their values and aspirations, while setting new goals that will shape their campus life.

DeLIvering Compassion

More than half of the students in a typical classroom have experienced some form of abuse or neglect, encountered a violent crime, or experienced another traumatic event. Trauma can impact brain development and impair a student's ability to learn and/or control behavior and social functioning. Trauma can also significantly affect a student's overall performance at school contributing to poor attendance and an increase in behavioral problems that lead to suspension or expulsion, and a higher dropout rate.