Glines-McBride, Megan
CAD 600.02
Diversity/Multiculturalism Statement
October 19, 2010
Edgewood Center for Children and Families (Edgewood) is located in the outer sunset neighborhood in San Francisco and its mission is “to strengthen children, youth, families, and their communities through service, training, advocacy, and research” (Edgewood, n.d.).
“Edgewood Center for Children and Families serves more than 5,000 children and families in the
Bay Area each year through its community and residential programs” (Edgewood, n.d.). This non-profit , started over 150 years ago is the oldest children’s charity west of the mississippi river. This renowned agency offers intensive services such as residential treatment, day treatment, educational therapy in the agency’s non-public school, medical, and psychiatric services. Edgewood offers kinship and family support, wraparound services, school-based programs, behavioral, mental, and physical health, and wellness community based services.
The program serves youth in the bay area that are in need of a higher level of care than their homes and/or schools can provide them. Edgewodo also provides families with support in caring for their children. There is a special community based program that serves kinship families. It was the first of its kind in the nation (Edgewood, n.d.). Youth in kinship care are raised by a relative other than their biological mother or father. Majority of the caregivers in kinship families are grandmothers. Edgewood also makes a difference on a larger scale through its advocacy and research on children in residential care, non public schools, and the quality of school based programming.
Despite working for Edgewood for four years, I have not heard of a specific statement the organization stands by as its mission to support multiculturalism and diversity. I recently have been asking coworkers in various departments if they have heard of a statement or mantra that
Edgewood uses to define its policy on this topic and none could report that they had heard of any such statement. While there may be no specific mission statement issued by Edgewood as its
1

Glines-McBride, Megan
CAD 600.02
Diversity/Multiculturalism Statement
October 19, 2010 view on multiculturalism and diversity, I can testify that Edgewood does make significant efforts to promote multiculturalism and diversity on multiple level. In my time with the agency I have attended multiple trainings offered by Edgewood entitled Cultural Compentency . Edgewood’s own training department offers trainings on this topic to its employees and other communtiy agencies six times a year. When new employees are hired at Edgewood each employee attends one of the Cultural Competency trainings as a part of their mandatory new hire training. Further trainings on multiculturalism and diversity are optional for the staff unless mandated by a supervisor. Recently the training department at Edgewood has decided that it wants to update its curriclum on multiculturalism and diversity. They are going to be holding two discussion groups, to which the employees are invited, to assess the current program and create a revised and upto-date curriculum.
Edgewood strives to ensure that the organization reflects the population it serves. Since the population served by the agency is very diverse, the organization has worked hard to hire a diverse staff as well as portray a diverse population in the pictures and decorations displayed around Edgewood’s campus. Edgewood offers most of its services in Spanish and Cantonese for those non-English speaking families. The communtiy based programs also provide mothly multicultural celebrations. Edgewood’s kinship youth services department provides educational opportunities for youth to explore their own communtities as well as the diverse set of communities found throughout San Francisco. This is especially important because these children are most commonly from families with low socioeconimic status and rarely get to travel out of their own neighborhoods regardless of the fact that San Francisco is only seven by seven miles.
2

Glines-McBride, Megan
CAD 600.02
Diversity/Multiculturalism Statement
October 19, 2010
Edgewood may not have established an agency-wide statement on diversity and multiculturalism, but I do believe there is evidence through its actions that these concepts are of high value to the organization. I think one of the major things that Edgewood has left to do in their effort to promote social justice is to publish a statement of Edgewood’s policy dedicated to diversity and multiculturalism. If I were to write one for the organization it would be: Edgewood values the diverse community to whom it serves and is dedicated to the promotion of multiculturalism both within the agency and among the population at large. Each of Edgewood’s components: Service, Advocacy, Research, and Training are devoted to the ideals that each person, familiy, and community is unique and invaluable. Every facet of the organizaiton strives to promote equality and social justice for all children and their families.
My personal views on the matter are right in line with the statement I wrote for
Edgewood. These concepts have always been important to me, they even inspired my move from a small suburban town to the beatifully diverse San Francisco. Growing up in a town where everyone looked, talked, and acted the same left me unfulfilled. I moved to San Francisco in hopes of finding different kinds of people and getting the opportunity to get to explore new cultures. In five years since I first moved to San Francisco I have grown so much as a person through my experiences with cultures, people, and though processes that are different from my own. The other factor that has contirubuted to my interest and commitment to diversity and multiculturalism is my college education. I have taken numerous psychology, philosophy, and child and adolescent development classes and all of them have taught me to appreciate different points of view. For example, Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences has offered the theory that there are more than the few intelligences promotoed in academia and that they should be weighted just as heavily, so that view of human ability is expanded (James, 2001). I strongly
3

Glines-McBride, Megan
CAD 600.02
Diversity/Multiculturalism Statement
October 19, 2010 believe that our society underestimates the strength and value in diversity, as is evident with the structure of our school systems. I am dedicated to opening people’s eyes to the strengths of diversity in all of the ways it manifests in people.
My personal statement on diversity is as follows: I am drawn to the fact that each individual is unique in his/her background, experience, and personality and I find this to be invaluable to not only the individual but to our society as well. I think that each person has a unique set of assets which allow him/her to contribute to our society in such a distinct way that only that individual could have done so. It is these unique contributions that have led to humankind’s greatest successes. The more the world population at large comes to embrace multiculturalism and diversity the more successes we will have. I personally am committed to doing my part to promote social justice through advocacy of all types of diversity.
References
Banks, James A. (2001). Multicultural benchmarks. An introduction to multicultural education.
(pp. 91-99). Allyn and Bacon.
Edgewood Center for Children and Families (n.d.). Overview. Retrieved from http://www.edgewood.org/whoweare/about/
Gorski, Paul C. (n.d.) 20 (Self-)Critical things I will do to be a more equitable educator. http://www.edchange.org
4