DiversityWorks' Programs

While DiversityWorks is taking a short break from most of its programmatic work outside of the Appreciating Diversity Film Series, the following are some of our signature programs:

The Works
The Works is a year-long, comprehensive program for 25-30 youth (ages 13-20) who are dedicated to community building, deepening their understanding of power and oppression, and working towards social change.  It is a mixed-gender, multiracial program that begins with an intensive six-week, 250 hour, anti-oppression, social justice training program, and then leads into a year of community action.  The summer intensive portion serves as an important gateway for youth into the DiverseCITY program.

Reality Check
Reality Check is a program that collaborates with youth-serving organizations and schools to provide three, intensive 20-hour diversity training workshops each year (spring, summer and fall).  Serving 10-25 high school youth each session, Reality Check is designed to accommodate the schedules of young people unable to make the time commitment required for The Works. Reality Check incorporates team building, leadership development and diversity awareness.  Many of the workshops include one day of service learning at a community agency and culminate with participants presenting a diversity training workshop to other youth in the community.

DiverseCITY (Challenging, Inspiring and Teaching Youth)
The DiverseCITY program is a peer education initiative that matches graduates from The Works and Reality Check with students in afterschool programs/clubs in multi-session diversity awareness workshops.  Each year, DiversityWorks hires fifteen youth graduates as D-CITY Reps who work about 10-12 hours a week.  Their work is entirely community-based and they work with hundreds of Bay Area youth during the course of the academic year.  Through interactive workshops, the Reps engage other youth in dialogue about pressing issues in their lives.  Workshops address identity formation, interpersonal interactions, and combating stereotypes.

Appreciating Diversity Film Series
DiversityWorks, along with the League of Women Voters and Piedmont's Appreciating Diversity Committee, runs the semi-monthly Appreciating Diversity Film Series.  Each showing attracts 100-300 people for high quality documentary movies followed by a community dialogue about the particular diversity issue(s) addressed in the film.

The Spot
The Spot is run entirely by youth.  Meeting every Friday evening from 5:30-7:30PM, it is a space for youth to dialogue about an issue of particular import.  Monthly topics to date have been “Commercialism”, “Going Global: Issues of Globalization”, “Sex & Relationships”, and “Poetry and Social Justice”.

GOT Diversity
This is our newest program where youth focus on doing advocacy work and organizing at the institutional level. This includes addressing oppression in different governmental agencies at the local, state, and federal levels to help ensure equality in working environments, service opportunities, and more.