East Tennessee Foundation Grants $2,500 to ReFrame Foundation

The East Tennessee Foundation recently granted ReFrame Foundation $2,500 through its Hope in Action Fund. This fund launched two years ago to support innovative programs and partnerships around protecting populations most likely to face discrimination and those that seed, support, and nurture hope and equality in their culture.

With this grant award, ReFrame will provide a racial equity workshop training series for home repair programs. Identifying bias and understanding equity will allow staff of ReFrame member organizations to implement cultural somatic practices in their home repair programs for people of limited means throughout East Tennessee and across the country.

This new ReFrame program will enable participants to embrace cultural humility by building the foundation for equity and inclusion, understand the role of anti-blackness and racism in American life, face the ghost and reckon with white bodied supremacy, move themselves and their organization towards liberation and leadership practices, and set a foundation for continued learning with provided supplemental reading and listening materials. 

Becca Davis, Co-Founder and Executive Director of ReFrame, says, “We’re so grateful to the East Tennessee Foundation for this grant. More than a dozen organizations will benefit from learning how to develop a practice of racial equity to analyze and address disparities in our work. It will allow home repair programs to be more diverse and inclusive and to provide services that are more equitable.” 

The training series kicked off with a workshop attended by 60 people on March 3. Participants of that are now eligible to receive subsidized anti-racism consultations for their organizations. The series will continue later this month through a new anti-racism community of practice in which cohort participants will earn a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace certificate. All home repair programs are invited to participate.

About ReFrame 

ReFrame promotes the preservation of safe, healthy, affordable homes for all by supporting the work of home repair and rehabilitation partners nationwide. ReFrame is the leading national network for home repair nonprofits. In the past 5 years, members have repaired more than 30,000 homes in vulnerable communities throughout the country.