Focus on Diversity
The Human Rights Campaign’s diversity mission has two important and related components. The first is to ensure that diversity is an intrinsic value of HRC’s organizational culture, not just a set of statistics or numbers.
The second part of HRC’s diversity mission is to be one of the most successful organizations in the country at uniting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and straight supporters with people of all races and backgrounds to ensure equality for all .
HRC’s Diversity Department, the first such program for a GLBT advocacy organization, is responsible for driving this diversity mission. In 2007, the organization created a chief diversity officer position that reports directly to HRC’s president. In addition to building partnerships and strategic alliances, supporting pride events for people of color and conducting diversity trainings for the organization’s volunteers and members, HRC’s Diversity Department is focused on two major initiatives:
- HRC’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Student Leadership Program, a one-of-a-kind program that educates and organizes students, faculty and administrators at HBCUs on the issues specific to GLBT students. Launched in 2002 in the wake of a swell of violence against black GLBT students on HBCU campuses, this program empowers, inspires and informs campus communities. It trains student activists to sustain dialogue, build viable student-led GLBT organizations and open campus-wide debates on GLBT issues, often for the first time.
- HRC’s National Dialogue, an endeavor to give voice and power to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of color. Alongside qualitative and quantitative research to identify the issues that would make a difference in the lives of these communities, HRC is organizing a grassroots effort led by the organization’s volunteers and members to engage face-to-face with GLBT people of color at work, at home, at places of worship and in the many different ways in which we come together in our communities. The results of the National Dialogue will inform HRC’s legislative agenda in 2008, as well as its diversity and educational outreach programs.