Dgep Bold Idea: Autonomous Power Frameworks – Asset-based Systematic Change
“A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems.”
WEB DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903
CONTEXT
America is becoming more black and brown with each passing year. Those black and brown populations are also becoming poorer with each passing year, while white wealth continues to grow. This wealth gap poses the greatest challenge to US and global racial equity. Furthermore, a country where the majority of its population has zero or negative wealth is at risk. A visual representation of this racial inequity is at the neighborhood and community level, which is becoming more racially and economically segregated each decade. Therefore, any hope of closing the racial equity gap must have a strong local community component.
The Autonomous Power Project is a sub-project of DGEP, focused on an asset-based approach to human capital in black communities across the full diaspora. Capital creates autonomy.
Purpose
Investment in building community power through agency in black communities.
The building of autonomous power through agency for black residents within the black global diaspora ultimately connecting to the wealth-building and racial equity efforts of others across America and the world.
Outcomes
Increase Individual Resilience: the ability to rely on personal strengths during times of adversity in order to overcome, adapt, bounce back and maintain agency. Individual resilience defined in this way, results f rom individual characteristics, social and environmental protective factors.
Increase Community Resilience: the capacity for a collective to support all residents, particularly those historically left out in the ability to recover and recalibrate f rom community- level adversity – both acute and chronic. Community resilience defined in this way, results f rom community conditions that promote healing, health and well- being.
Provide Resources for Existing or Emerging Community Organizing Efforts
Emergency Response Funds - Community organizers experience unique barriers that nonprofit organizations do not. Organizers are rarely compensated for their time or reimbursed for costs associated with their work. Black community leaders who need an immediate infusion of financial support to sustain grassroots efforts will have access to these funds.
Key Contributor Stipends – DGEP’s trust-building approach includes a community-driven advisory committee that will make funding decisions for locally generated solutions and empower the community leaders who inform and actively guide those solutions.
Provide Project Seed Funding – Immediate investment in scalable projects aligned with the stated dreams of black communities across America and the world.
Identified projects will increase:
- safety & quality affordable housing
- community success
- civic voice
- investment equity
- financial mobility
DGEP will leverage its networks and resources to seek additional, large-scale funding for successful projects.
Support the capacity for local community members to civically engage in the planning and development of activities directly impacting their neighborhood.
Leadership Development and Skills Building
Investment will include third-party facilitation and training determined by local black communities.
Examples of development training could include: Data fluency; community organizing; civic engagement; project planning; personal leadership development; fundraising/development; etc.
Foster Community-led Planning Processes
Meaningful and full engagement in the projects associated with the development of their neighborhoods and communities happens when local communities participate with the resources and skills to apply their power and leverage the unique assets that black communities possess; and turning those unique assets into family, neighborhood, and community mobility.
Supporting Black Community Racial Equity STAMPS Social Entrepreneurs
The black community diaspora has a natural abundance of individuals with incredible assets when it comes to addressing racial inequity. Through the Autonomous Power Project, those unique assets will be nurtured and converted into better socioeconomic well-being for children, families, neighborhoods, communities, and the entire black diaspora, through jobs, entrepreneurship, and asset-based ownership. This makes the black community the ideal community to lead the Racial Equity Design Thinking processes needed for meaningful change.
DGEP Campus Specialized Education
Specialized education catering to the individual guiding passions and guiding problems of BIPOC communities across America and the globe. The DGEP campus will be able to offer coursework from the single course to a campus-wide curriculum, both in-person and virtually.