The Martha’s Vineyard Diversity Coalition boasts many valuable programs, all of which align closely with our mission. Learn more by reading below, and clicking for further detail.
Borders to Bridges
Borders to Bridges is designed to promote dialogue in schools and communities by engendering deeper understanding and discussion about the issue of immigration to counter the myths, bullying, and fears that negatively affect our learning institutions. The Guidebook contains practical lessons plans, narratives, poetry, mixed media artwork and resources for K-12 educators to enrich learning and engage students about issues that touch their lives and communities. Contributors include world-renowned educators, poets, artists, and writers from 32 countries and 15 states of the U.S.
Building Bridges of Understanding
The Martha’s Vineyard Diversity Coalition (MVDC) offers multicultural workshops called Building Bridges of Understanding. The original model was designed for young people by Educators for Social Responsibility and it’s been revised to effectively connect people of different ages, ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds in an effort to promote an understanding of our human differences and commonalities.
Police Implicit Bias Training
Edgartown Police Chief Bruce Manamee, representing the six island police chiefs approached MVDC to help launch this training. Through our relationship with the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation, MVDC obtained two-thirds of the funds for the program, established an on-going committee to oversee the training process, to assure the awareness and participation of the community and to provide analysis of police-stop data as a measure of training effectiveness.
Library Book Program
In the Fall of 2020, our Education Committee was approached by an island librarian to inquire whether we might support the expansion of their racial-equity-based books collection. In considering that this was a most worthy request, the Committee also immediately asked what the needs of the many school-and-town libraries might be which were not supported by their own budgets. From that committee discussion was born an island-wide program to help build ample collections of books and other educational materials in all libraries. An request/review/approval process was established. An opportunity is also provided for donations to be made to the program.
