County Deepens Learning on Equity with Other Local Governments

County’s HHSA delegation at the 2022 GARE Membership Meeting

By the Office of Equity and Racial Justice

How do we sustain the work of racial equity in government? One key factor in advancing the movement by developing “bureadvocates” (bureaucrats + advocates) within local governments across the country.

This role of the internal equity advocate is emerging as a key theme and purpose of the 2022 Government Alliance on Race & Equity’s (GARE) annual meeting. This year’s conference was the first for a delegation of County employees who joined a thousand other equity practitioners in Portland, Oregon and hundreds more virtually to deepen learning, discuss challenges and be immersed in best and next practices.

OERJ Director Andrew Strong with keynote speaker john a powell of the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley

Since the Office of Equity & Racial Justice (OERJ) was established in 2021, the County became an enterprise member of GARE, plugging into a vast network of local government organizations across many functions – from public health to safety, to planning and economic development.

OERJ is using several tools from GARE and from peer governments that are helping to shape our County’s recent implementation of equity impact statements for board letters and the Budget Equity Assessment Tool. We look forward to advancing our practice as the County of San Diego continues to prioritize equity and belonging in its organizational strategy and operations.

This year at the conference, participants joined inspiring plenary sessions and dynamic workshops to learn a variety of ways to normalize, organize and operationalize equity in local government. They convened shortly afterwards to debrief the many valuable takeaways.

Read the reflections and access resource lists here: GARE Conference Takeaways & Resource list.

Participants from our Health & Human Services Agency also recapped the lessons learned, see their slides.

As an institutional GARE member, all County employees are invited to sign up for an account at GARE to access recordings from the conference as well as regular online workshops and discussion groups.

Register at https://garemembers.racialequityalliance.org using your County email address and by selecting “County of San Diego” as the affiliation.

Want to learn more? Simply sign up for one of several upcoming GARE informational sessions.