Are You Ready To Talk About Racism?

Racism. It is a word that elicits strong emotion, and often even stronger opinions. Taking the step to engage in anti-racism work may seem intimidating, or maybe you already feel confident in your knowledge of racial justice and in your allyship. Regardless of where you sit on that spectrum, this training is one that can have benefit for everyone.

Whether you are a social service or mental health professional pursuing a unique and impactful continuing education experience, a student, or anyone regardless of profession who is seeking to learn and grow in anti-racist allyship, this virtual training experience will challenge you, and expose you to knowledge and skills to gain better understanding of racial justice and allyship.  This is a virtual training, with 3 modules (approximately 2 hours of content in each module). The training is asynchronous, designed for participants to be able to take breaks as they need to, and to work at their own pace.  

The videos within this training include Open Captions in English. For other accessibility needs or accommodations, contact driep.contact@gmail.com

​

Participants will:

• Learn about historical events, ideologies, and social structures, and how they inform modern day beliefs, bias, and perception.

• Analyze concepts of racial identity, bias, privilege, and prejudice

• Reflect on their own identity, bias, privilege, and prejudice

• Identify strategies to engage in difficult conversations

• Reflect on ways to integrate anti-racism work into their daily lives

​

Facilitated by Ashley Heidebrecht, MSW

Ashley has worked in the field of social services for over a decade. Ashley worked at a Kansas non-profit for 8 years, providing individual and group community-based services to children, adults, and families diagnosed with a severe emotional disturbance, and creating and facilitating multiple workshops and parenting classes, and the last 6 years at that agency served as a supervisor of 80 staff with a client base of over 200 children and families. Since leaving that agency in 2015, Ashley has provided case management and trauma support for families recovering from homelessness, and has become active in community organizing and advocacy, particularly surrounding migrant child detention, LGBTQ rights, racial equity, and reproductive rights, and has completed her Master of Social Work degree. 

​

Most recently, Ashley has served LGBTQ youth and adults in group and individual settings, engaged in casework with the Deaf community, and focused on immigrant rights and fighting against family separation and child detention. Ashley now serves as the Education and Content Manager for the Diversity and Resiliency Institute of El Paso, creating and facilitating training and continuing education rooted in social justice.

Ashley focuses heavily on advocacy and education, providing educational opportunities to improve community awareness and allyship, and engaging in regional and national initiatives to fight discrimination. Ashley is also working to mobilize social workers across the Nation to become more engaged in social justice initiatives.