CASE STUDY
Summer Search
Racial equity has always been an essential driver of Summer Search’s work. Summer Search sees its program as “supporting students in navigating the systemic barriers to success so they can achieve economic equity and a life of purpose.” However, in assessing its programming, Summer Search realized that students and staff did not always feel comfortable or supported, especially when it came to issues of race and identity.
Programs & activities, Evaluation & learning, Culture
Background
Beginning in 1990, Summer Search has provided mentoring, summer experiential learning, and other support to young people during their critical transitions from high school to post-secondary education to launching a fulfilling career. Since its founding, Summer Search has served 8,000 young people across five major US cities, mostly people of color who are first-generation college students.
The equity journey
Racial equity has always been an essential driver of Summer Search’s work. 97% of Summer Search students identify as people of color, and 91% are first-generation college students. Summer Search sees its program as “supporting students in navigating the systemic barriers to success so they can achieve economic equity and a life of purpose.” However, in assessing its programming, Summer Search realized that students and staff did not always feel comfortable or supported, especially when it came to issues of race and identity.
Programs & activities
In deploying an annual survey of participating students, Summer Search identified several key areas for improving its programming. One part of Summer Search’s programming is summer experiential learning: working with partners to place students on summer trips involving outdoor adventure, cultural exchange, and community service. The surveys suggested that most students had positive overall experiences, but there were kids who reported experiencing racism and microaggressions. Summer Search began to assess its trip-providing partners more rigorously, developing a curriculum to train trip leaders, and cutting ties with partners who did not make meaningful improvements to the experience for students of color.
In its mentoring program, Summer Search heard from mentors that they did not feel sufficiently trained to serve their students. Students also reported that their mentoring did not adequately address issues of race, gender, and identity. This led Summer Search to adapt its mentoring program, moving from exclusively one-on-one mentoring towards a combination of one-on-one and group settings. Summer Search formalized its mentoring approach around four key pillars: social emotional skills, adolescent development and identity formation, critical consciousness about systems of oppression in the US, and trauma sensitivity.
Evaluation & learning
Summer Search’s programmatic shifts over the past seven years have been informed by the organization’s evaluation and learning efforts. The annual survey of students is a key tool for Summer Search to diagnose problems in its programming. The data, which is disaggregated by students’ race and gender (among other demographic factors), allows Summer Search to identify specific gaps in student experience and target solutions accordingly.
Summer Search also collects data to improve equity in its talent management. A talent dashboard allows Summer Search to track recruitment, retention, and promotion of staff, breaking down the data by gender and by race. This data informs strategies to better recruit and retain talent, especially people of color. Over the past seven years, there has been a significant increase in the number of BIPOC staff at Summer Search.
Culture
Summer Search sought to build a culture that recognized and reckoned with racial inequity in the US. Every staff member goes through specific training on racial equity, including concepts of white privilege, white dominant culture, and how the organization might be reinforcing those values. Summer Search established “community agreements”, which focused on liberation, racial equity, and centering diverse voices in decision-making. For example, one tenet of the community agreements reads: “We deliberately take action to acknowledge and center people of color, especially black people… We consciously prioritize the leadership of people of color, queer and trans people, people with different body sizes, people living with disabilities, and poor people. In naming and practicing this, we make the invisible visible to maintain awareness and create space for us to collectively heal through reflection, repair and liberation of all people.”
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