Read Our Joint Statement Addressing Racial Injustice.
At HOW, we’re working to address inequities for people of color living on the Outer Cape.
For instance, last year we launched an outreach campaign to women of color living on the Outer Cape. In December, we received a grant from the Cape Cod Healthcare Foundation to help address inequities in healthcare access on the Outer Cape, and to increase our organization’s cultural competency. To date we have been working on the following projects related to direct service:
- We’re continuing our direct outreach campaign to women of color;
- We launched the Tablet Program to provide free internet access, and working with local business owners and our community partners we connected with many more women of color who were living at home without internet access during the earliest days of the pandemic;
- We added a translation feature to our website;
- We’re working internally to do a better job of tracking ethnicity and race for all our HOW community members, as well as planning for staff training on diversity, equity and bias.
In addition, we joined with six other non-profit leaders to issue a statement about systemic racism and the current demonstrations across the country. This same group of non-profits received joint funding to work together and identify ways our organizations can increase our cultural competency and respond better to people of color who work, own businesses, and live on the Outer & Lower Cape. As leaders, we know the work begins with us — as individuals and in our organizations. Finally, through Gwynne’s volunteer work on the Provincetown Recovery & Reopening Coalition, we’ve successfully advocated for the creation of a Diversity & Inclusion committee that will be led by the Town’s Health Department.
This is only a beginning. The team at HOW pledges to continue to learn, to listen, and to report on our progress.