Bridging the Divide

Bridging the Divide is a project sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies. It is a collaboration of leading advocates, implementers and analysts focused on producing an understanding and a praxis that addresses racial and economic inequality.

The purpose of Bridging the Divide is to incubate emerging practices, pilot prototypes and operationalize equity lens, frames and analyses. Our approach is to serve as a bridge that takes the learnings, skills and resources of the grass tops to the grass roots and from the grass roots to the grass tops in a way that builds capacity on the ground for local communities, organizations and institutions.

We will do this in three primary ways:

1. Act as a bridge between government and community to catalyze systemic social change
2. Act as a bridge between racial economic thought and on the ground best practices to advance economic security for the wealth poor
3. Act as a bridge between financial organizations, associations, professionals and community to provide best practice strategies for long term wealth development

Initial Projects:

Right To Root
Led by Radix Consulting, the Right 2 Root Campaign is an inclusive, grassroots, community-funded and led neighborhood planning and development campaign employing a solution focused approach to re/address the root causes of disparity while catalyzing social change.

Right 2 Root is designed to create a People+Place based community stabilization program to increase Health+Wealth for African American / Black residents using a Public Health approach as a means to reduce disparities, increase opportunities and generate prosperity. Right 2 Root leverages planning tools, public interest design, and community assets to create healthy, innovative places. #Right2Root #HealingSymptomsChangingSystems #SupportOurSisters

Grass Roots Change
Grass Roots Change is a project that supports local violence intervention initiatives and economic empowerment initiatives with an understanding that racial economic inequality and instability is a leading cause of community disruption and fragility.

Action, Analysis and the Racial Wealth Divide
In partnership with Inequality.org, Bridging the Divide will help create an regularly update website of resources, analysis and best practices focused on addressing the racial wealth divide. This can quickly become the pre-eminent site for racial wealth divide information that so many institutions are looking for as more and more look to address this issue.