Dear Friends,

Thank you for joining our effort to map the great work that has long been happening across the state of North Carolina to promote racial equity and eliminate structural racism in our educational system and beyond.

Our goal for this mapping project is to help build a visible network of organizations engaged in this work across the state in order to highlight the efforts that are already underway, especially those that are centering and being led by communities of color.

We hope that the map will help to connect organizations to one another across sectors, facilitate the sharing and building of resources, knowledge, and collective action, and elevate and support the critical work that each of you are engaged in as individual organizations. Additionally, it is our hope that the collective network of racial equity advocates will be stronger as a whole than as the sum of its parts.

We have listed some examples of benefits that various stakeholders across the fields of education, nonprofit and community based work, research, philanthropy, policy and more could expect to gain from inclusion in and use of this map. We hope that this map will:

• Connect nonprofits, community and school-based organizations to philanthropists who are seeking to fund racial equity work.
• Help educators, schools, districts, and advocates engaged in racial equity work to identify similar efforts happening across the state and facilitate the sharing of resources, curriculum, strategies, best practices.
• Connect parents and students with community groups, advocates, and sources of support and elevate the voices of parents and students of color.
• Facilitate the building of research-policy-practice partnerships.
• Allow policymakers to learn from key stakeholders about their perspectives, needs, and knowledge of best strategies for policy and practice.

We are grateful for your participation and for the work that you do. We look forward to connecting with you all in the movement for racial equity in education and beyond across the state of North Carolina.