Facing Race: A National Conference in St. Louis, MO — November 20-22, 2024

Sky Allen

Project Manager | Inland Empowerment
Pronouns: she/her

Sky Allen is the Project Manager for Inland Empowerment, a coalition of nonprofit organizations organized to increase civic participation through engagement of historically ignored and disenfranchised communities of color. Through her role Sky has served as both Census Coordinator for Census IE and IE RISE Coordinator for the IE RISE table. With IE RISE, she facilitates cross regional collaboration of an ambitious community grounded, regional planning table. Prior to Inland Empowerment, Sky was a policy fellow for the Warehouse Worker Resource Center leading a civic engagement campaign and researching city planning within the Inland Empire. She graduated from the UCR with a B.S. in Business Administration and a Minor in Ethnic Studies.


Presentations from Facing Race 2020

Building a Regional Narrative Infrastructure for Transformative Change: A Case Study

This is the presentation and discussion of a case study of the partnership between the Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI) and Inland Empowerment, a civic engagement table in California’s Inland Empire region. The partners sought to understand the regional drivers of inequality and construct a strategic narrative to counter the dominant narrative. The session’s focus is on: 1) the collaboration to understand the implications of an OBI California-wide survey; 2) the partnership in the design and conduct of research in the region; 3) the current plan to create an infrastructure across communities and issues that share the strategic narrative.

The session is the presentation and discussion of a case study of the partnership between the Othering and Belonging Institute, a research institute and Inland Empowerment, a civic engagement table of a dozen organizations in the Inland Empire region of California engaged in base building and civic engagement. The partners sought to understand the drivers of inequality in the region and to construct a strategic narrative to counter the dominant narrative in the region. The focus of the session is on: 1) the collaboration to understand the implications of an OBI California-wide survey; 2) the partnership in the design of a qualitative and quantitative research agenda, the conduct of the qualitative research, and the meaning-making of the research results; 3) the current plan to create an infrastructure across racial and ethnic communities and across issues that share the common strategic narrative that seeks to influence identities and worldviews. This is in the form of an Inland Empowerment Narrative Hub to implement the findings of the research, including narrative tools and messaging.
 
The session is based upon the work of the Blueprint for Belonging (B4B) Project, a California-wide project which was initiated by the Othering and Belonging Institute, UC Berkeley with partner organizations, including CHIRLA, California Calls, PICO California, ACCE and over 25 other organizations, that has engaged in a five-year process to develop and deploy a progressive strategic narrative capable of contending with the dominant narrative and its underlying worldview.

Speakers: Joshua Clark, Sky Allen, Gerald Lenoir, Olivia Araiza