• Training
  • Trainers
• Mentors
• Research
• Collaboratives

Major Programs and Initiatives

OAP’s current program strategies advance organizing and racial justice leadership work by building the skills of and relationships between diverse organizers and community leaders, by supporting strategic multi-racial organizing work and issue campaigns, by creating and communicating new public policy research and bridges to research that can expand the impact of organizing. OAP’s primary program strategies are designed to intersect with and build on each other. Together, they will help expand the effectiveness of a wide range of organizing and community groups working to advance racial as well as social and economic equity in Minnesota

Advancing Racial Justice

In 2006, OAP expanded and focused its mission and adopted new program strategies to more effectively advance racial, as well as economic and social justice in the state. This expansion and re-focusing grows from four primary observations about what is happening and needs to happen to advance justice and a powerful common vision in the state.

• Minnesota is changing. By 2030, at least 16 percent of Minnesota’s population will be people of color, up from 9 percent in 2000, and that population growth will not center in the Urban areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul but in suburban and Greater Minnesota’s communities.
• There are stark disparities between white Minnesotans and Minnesotans of color in every area of life. These disparities are rooted in systemic barriers to equity that, while often unintended and un-seen, have a powerful and cumulative effect on real opportunity and life options for Minnesotans of color.
• Those disparities and our collective inability to address or even clearly name them – undermine our ability to come together and to live our common and historic Minnesota values of equity, justice and opportunity for all.

• This failure has a clear impact on communities of color but also has a powerful impact on our future as a state.

OAP’s racial justice organizing initiative centers around three primary strategies that we believe will help build a new kind of organizing, and a new, more relevant and more effective common vision for justice in the state

Training

Effective organizing that builds leadership, relationship, power, and vision in and between Minnesota’s diverse communities is essential to any long-term work for justice. OAP’s training initiatives strengthen organizing for racial, cultural, social and economic justice by providing in depth training and development for an emerging group of diverse organizers through the annual apprenticeship program: and by providing or sponsoring other relevant training programs for mentors and organizational leaders.

Public Policy and Research

Effective long term organizing for racial justice requires strong research support and the real ability to bring communities together around policies that have an impact on equity. OAP’s new initiative to strengthen research and policy support for racial justice organizing will bridge the gap between people and policy.

Collaboratives & Strategic Convening for Action

Effective action for racial equity, social, and economic justice requires diverse communities to come together and work together for common visions and goals. OAP supports and convenes multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-organizational collaboratives and action groups working to create powerful, long term change in key institutions and issue areas important to communities of color.