Nonprofit Spotlight: EmbraceRace

Giving

In June, PennyLoafer donors collectively gave to EmbraceRace!

The Rundown

• Years founded: 2016

• Leadership: Founded by two parents, Melissa Giraud and Andrew Grant-Thomas, who have long worked in racial equity and social justice and wanted to fill the gap in learning resources while raising two multi-racial daughters.

• Issue they address: lack of tools and resources for parents to talk about race with young children.

• What they do: support parents, teachers, caregivers and other adults to raise children who are thoughtful, informed and brave about race.

• How they do it:

• Resource-building: they identify, organize and create the tools, resources and discussion spaces to nurture empathetic and inclusive children. This includes webinars, action kits, articles, children’s books and stories.

• Community-building: create online spaces for parents, caregivers, educators and other adults to learn + support each other.

• Strategic partnerships: to help make racial learning a part of children’s development.

Why they were chosen

EmbraceRace fills a gap in healthy racial learning resources for parents, caregivers and educators working with children from 0-8 years old. They are helping to raise the next generation of children to be more inclusive and empathetic with the tools to address some of the biggest challenges facing us as a multiracial society.

• They have a large reach. EmbraceRace has produced 70+ Talking Race & Kids webinars with over 68K views, have had 500K website visits, 63K people subscribe to their email list and over 65 experts create content for their community.
• They’re supported by an impressive advisory committee, including American writer and civil rights activist, Michelle Alexander.
• And they have lots of cool partnerships and initiatives launching, including the Rapid Response Research Network to foster relationships between researchers and interested families in taking part in fun, educational anti-racist research studies and a kids arts program in collaboration with antiracist art educators.

Learning

🤔 When do children start to form racial biases?

While many adults in the U.S. think children should be about 5 years old before any conversations about race occur, the little ones are making sense of their world much earlier.

• By 6 months, babies are noticing racial differences.
• And by age 4, children have started to show signs of racial bias, like associating some racial groups with negative traits or associating whites with wealth and higher status.

By adolescence, these biases can become fairly entrenched, yet most racial learning resources are geared towards middle and high school teachers.

EmbraceRace is filling this gap of healthy racial learning tools and resources for parents, caregivers and educators of children ages 0-8.

📜 Increase in legislation censoring what schools can teach

At the same time, the country is experiencing a backlash about critical race theory and what can be taught to children in schools. Since the beginning of 2021, 35 states have enacted 137 bills limiting what schools can teach in regards to “controversial” topics, like race or gender identity among others.

If you enjoyed this and want to get involved, you can support the Racial Justice cause on PennyLoafer, starting with as little as $5/month. Each month, you’ll support and learn about a different nonprofit creating a more equitable world.