Last week we paused all social media and email communication in solidarity with #blackouttuesday and #amplifyblackvoices and in acknowledgement that our primarily white voices were not the voices that needed to be heard.
The Bishop’s Ranch staff has been listening, learning, planning and actively engaging in local protests of the unjust deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and too many others. We stand with the #blacklivesmatters movement and commit ourselves and our organization to the work of anti-racism.
The Ranch’s mission is to serve God by providing for people of all walks of life a place where lives are changed; a place of hospitality amidst the beauty of God’s creation where renewal of spirit, mind, and body is nourished, leading to spiritual growth and closer relationships with God and one another. Our board of directors reads this mission statement at the beginning of each meeting, and it guides and informs our decision making.
As part of the Episcopal Church we take seriously our baptismal covenant “to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being with God’s help.”
We recognize that we have much work to do. We have taken steps and will take many more.
We acknowledge that the Ranch itself exists on land once home to Southern Pomo people.
We acknowledge that the Ranch has too often been a predominantly “white space.”
We have committed to equality and justice in our hiring, staffing and compensation practices and have a diverse staff reflective of the racial demographics of Sonoma County where more often racism shows itself between white and Latinx communities.
We acknowledge there is much more work to be done, and we commit to doing the work.
Hi Addie,
Sorry to say we don’t check our comments page regularly enough, especially with our reduced staffing.
You make some great points here and I will share them with other folks here. We do not have anything currently written that I can share with you, but diversity awareness and outreach has been the topic of board retreats and staff planning. We are working on obtaining grant funding to allow us to support more POC groups to come on retreat here. We want to work on a fundraising strategy that basically allows us to “give the Ranch away” to those who need it.
We continue to work on diversifying camp attendance and staffing, and we have a long way to go. We have had very limited success in attracting BIPOC staff candidates.
I am happy to continue this conversation with you. Feel free to email me – jack@bishopsranch.org.
I hope you are doing well.