The Center for Ideas, Equity & Transformative Change is a resource hub of sustainable innovation.
We provide strategic support to people and communities that are committed to responsible building of power through cultural change.
We are fully invested in supporting the self determination of indigenous, black and brown communities in their knowledge and cultural productions that uphold self- assertions, self- reliance and self- determination.
We facilitate the sustainable, equitable and just impacting of local/regional economies and system change. We are committed to racial equity, human rights, economic justice, environmental justice, health equity, food sovereignty, labor rights and ethical leadership.
Our theory of change is rooted in the framework of social equality that centers health, wellness and healing of peoples and places as informed by the pedagogies of the oppressed from the Global South, the Gulf South and the Deep South, which are home to us.
We make sustainable impact on individuals, institutions and infrastructure across the Deep South with our values centered expertise.
Individuals: We are instrumental in developing food systems leaders in MS, and across the country through our partnership work with MS Food Justice Collaborative, the MS Food Policy Council, the Center for MS Food Systems and Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Liveable Future – Community of Learning and Practice. We support the dignity of community cultural workers through our giving strategy with our partner, the Deep South Solidarity Fund and Another Gulf Is Possible We are building a strategy of community media making through the Gulf South Media Institute.
Institutions: We support municipalities in applying data to accessing resources through our partnership with National League of Cities. We provide city leadership with strategic cultural support to engage in narrative change through our Southern Futures Project documentary work in partnership with the City of Birmingham. We support the strategic development and sustainability of media, arts, culture and food systems institutions such as FLEET Creative, Black Dirt Collective and Earth Bound. We partner with media institutions such as Red Squared Productions in producing culture and knowledge that informs narrative change about Mississippi.
Infrastructure: We support the development of people and state of the art, climate through strategic resource generation through Deep South Solidarity Fund, Center for MS Food Systems and Delta Commons.
Data science, cultural strategy, institutional capacity building, resource generation, relationship building, leadership development, equitable and just policy, and community centered economic development are our areas of expertise.
