The Irving Harris Foundation’s mission is to enhance the quality of life for children, families and communities by advancing human potential, social justice and equity, and creative experience and expression. Root Cause has worked with the Foundation since 2016, with a special focus on the Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work With Infants, Children and Families. The Tenets are a set of guiding principles and practices that strengthen the commitment and capacity of infant, child, and family professionals, organizations and systems to embed diversity, inclusion, and equity principles into their work.
The Tenets Initiative, formed from the Working Group of the Irving Harris Foundation’s Professional Development Network, helps professionals, organizations and systems of care by offering a set of aspirational principles which we can all strive towards. The Tenets Initiative helps people, organizations and systems of care by offering a set of aspirational principles which we can all strive towards. The Tenets Initiative offers workshops to help participants link the Tenets to their spheres of practice by reaching new levels of self-understanding, unpacking programmatic and organizational practices, and analyzing policy efforts to effect change. They start by engaging with a central assumption: we cannot do work in diversity, equity and inclusion without beginning with ourselves. The Tenets Initiative envisions a workforce in which all individuals, programs, organizations and systems of care embed principles of diversity, equity and inclusion into their work serving infants, children and families.
Finding Common Purpose
