Racial Equity Initiative For Social Justice

Overview: National Racial Equity Initiative For Social Justice

The NREI’s mission is to combat systemic injustice and advance racial equity, human rights, education, and economic development opportunities for the Black community. Housed in the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s (CBCF) Center for Policy Analysis and Research (CPAR), the NREI takes an evidence-based approach to develop sound policies targeted to reduce racial disparities caused by racism and discrimination. NREI provides solutions-driven and proactive policies and practices that produce equitable access, opportunities, treatment, and outcomes for African Americans. Recognizing that combating systemic racism can be achieved through various avenues, the NREI framework supports the CBCF’s organizational mission of developing leaders, informing policy, and educating the public. The NREI includes social justice fellows, social justice scholarships for HBCU students, a task force, research, data, and public policy related to social justice reform for maximum impact in Black communities. The scope of work for the NREI involves measurable deliverables and activism that shape the Foundation of NREI’s establishment, operational trajectory, and research policy.

Operations Overview

On January 25, 2021, CBCF welcomed its first Director, Olajumoke Obayanju, to lead the NREI program. On September 13, 2021, CBCF welcomed Senior Program Manager Solomon Ayalew to assist with the administrative and operational functions of NREI. Below is an overview of the work accomplished to grow the NREI's capacity, develop its systems, and refine its operations.

Onboarding

Senior Program Manager (Solomon Ayalew)

» Assists with NREI’s strategic implementation; » Oversees administrative and operational functions for NREI programming; » Implements and leads a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) process for each NREI component; » Assists in the production of NREI research, materials, and deliverables; and » Tracks the progress of priority federal legislation that advances social justice reform.

Ten sponsored one-year Fellows

» Assist in producing research, materials and programming that align with NREI’s mission and research agenda.

Data Organization & Migration

Director Olajumoke Obayanju created a robust system to document and organize the NREI materials into a SharePoint that is easily accessible to team members. The SharePoint has been crucial in allowing for efficient operations within NREI and across departments.

The Director and Senior Program Manager migrated relevant data from various databases and uploaded them to easily accessible files.

» HBCU Scholarship data from Academic Works » NREI Fellows’ data from Leadership Institute database » CPAR Institutional history from CPAR database

Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E)

The Senior Program Manager’s role includes developing M&E models for each NREI component. These models are to serve as tools to not only enhance the quality of project planning and management but also assist NREI’s assessment of project progress and achieved objectives. Each M&E provides a consolidated source of information that showcases our NREI components' success and growth areas.

» As of January 2022, three of the four NREI components have M&E models.

(NREI HBCU Scholarship Program, NREI John R. Lewis Social Justice Fellowship Program, NREI Policy Research)

We have also developed checkpoint surveys for the HBCU Scholarships and John R. Lewis Social Justice Fellowship Program to help capture data on participant satisfaction. /6