Whatcom Family & Community Network’s (WFCN) vision, values, and key frameworks demand that we build community capacity for equity, social connection, inclusion, empowerment, and collective action. We work from a resilience and hope-building model to be trauma-informed. We understand that if our work is not anti-racist, it is not trauma informed. We continue to learn how to translate this understanding into action. We know and want to emphasize that becoming an anti-racist organization is an ongoing process – continuously learning, growing, and adapting is essential to building informed and trusting relationships within the community.
WFCN anti-racist statement of support & action
Whatcom Family & Community Network (WFCN) envisions a thriving community built on equity, social connection, participation, and opportunities. Our mission is to promote wellbeing in children, youth, and families by convening and supporting communities to build their capacity.
As an organization committed to improving the lives of children, youth, and families in Whatcom County, we know we cannot do so effectively without acknowledging and addressing the impacts of discrimination on the individuals and communities we serve. We believe that all people should experience safety and wellbeing in community human service agencies. More importantly, we are clear that WFCN, like other local organizations and systems, has not provided that experience by excluding, omitting, and/or tokenizing individuals and communities based on their identities and demographics. As such, we are publicly committing to taking the journey to become an inclusive multicultural organization.
Our work aims to reduce and eliminate exposures to toxic stress and trauma for children, youth, and families and to increase protective factors so that all can thrive. Childhood trauma can occur as forms of community trauma such as exposure to discrimination, violence, bullying, and harassment. Racism is a form of community trauma and is thus a threat not only to our mission, but to our community’s wellbeing.
Our values guide our actions — we believe in connection, inclusion, love, healing, and addressing data-driven health disparities with evidence-based and innovative strategies. Our solid stance is that there is no place for bullying, harassment, discrimination, or violence toward one another in our communities.
We are each impacted by the systems in which we live. We aim to build community capacity for acceptance and belonging with a lens toward equity and cultural humility, compassion, and curiosity in the face of conflict and discomfort. We invest time and effort to increase healthy social connection that strengthens bonds and builds bridges.
WFCN commits to never-ending improvement to engage a wide diversity of people, including people of color, to have an organizational home in which to take leadership, share power, and transform organizational norms and culture. This looks like engaging in conversations on critical issues of equity, inclusion, and participation; sharing in decision-making about how resources are allocated and what work gets done based on priority setting; and allowing everyone the space to make mistakes – to be human. Internal to our organization, we provide training and facilitate meaningful discussions about privilege, power, and accountability. We set clear standards for inclusion at all levels of the organization. We consistently review our mission, vision, policies, procedures, and every other guiding fundamental aspect of our organization to ensure that our commitment to end racism is a consistent theme.
In Whatcom County, racism has been declared a public health crisis (Whatcom County Health Board, 2020). We call on our coalition members, community partners, and all whose lives we connect with to join us in a collective effort to educate, show love, offer connection and healing, and promote inclusion and equity through anti-racist actions.
Individually, we are called to examine ourselves, our bias and privilege, our participation, and our impact on others. We are called to educate ourselves, reflect on our behaviors, and do the work of changing our minds, our words, and our actions so that we can collectively act to recognize systemic oppression, and then call for and act for systemic change. We are called to notice when we see racism and bias in action and we are called to speak up to stop the harm it causes.
We partner to address health disparities in order to increase resilience and hope for those who identify as people of color, who find belonging in the LGBTQ+ community, and who, due to poverty and other social issues, are living in places without access to healthcare and other basic human needs. Through our work, we embed resilience-based practices into systems to mitigate trauma and toxic stress, to heal the pain of historical injustice, and to increase resilience and hope in communities so that we can all experience wellbeing — especially our youth. We work to decrease risks and elevate protections that prevent youth substance use/abuse and increase their mental wellbeing. We work so that youth may lead healthy lives and reach their full potential.
