World Café : Harnessing Capital for Social Change #LC25Years
As part of our 25th anniversary celebrations, Living Cities is hosting a Virtual Event for our broader network to engage in critical conversation around Closing Racial Opportunity Gaps. We encourage you to tune-in, share your thoughts, provide feedback, and partake in conversation with participants.
After an amazing Pecha Kucha session from Ben Hecht, Don Chen and Kesha Cash, atendees participated in small conversations, World Café- style around harnessing capital for social change. I feel so honored to be at the table with Mayor Tony Williams, former Mayor of District of Columbia, and currently the CEO of Federal City Council.
We heard from Mayor Tony Williams on the current and past work of Federal City Council, especially in investing in civic improvement in Washington D.C. and then opened up the conversation to two different tables. Our tables included folks from banks, higher education, nonprofits and government, which brought up amazing opportunities for cross-sector collaborations in closing racial gaps.
How capitalism can accelerate closing the racial gaps:
- Don't reinvent the wheel — there is a lot of work being done in terms of public-private partnerships (Examples of infrastructure work from Federal City Council)
- Measure social impact not how businesses do corporate social responsibility — We need to develop metrics for corporations to measure impact. Universities can be part of this conversation as they have the infrastructure for data and metrics.
- Market pressures for corporations to invest in social change — Customers are demanding more socially-conscious companies.
- We need to talk to each other — There are different innovative initiatives happening in cities, but most are self-siloed.
- Focus on asset building strategies
- Leverage influence of the ecosystem and build coalition — Commit to always have private sector AND public sector at the table.
- Intentionality is key — Leaders across sectors need to intentionally focus on racial equity.
- Tell the story — We need to show what has worked!
