91´«Ã½

Launched by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in 2016, Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) is a comprehensive, national and community-based process to plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change, and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism. It seeks to unearth and jettison the deeply held, and often unconscious, beliefs created by racism — including the belief in a hierarchy of human value.

TRHT Great Stories Club

The connects 91´«Ã½’s longstanding literary programming model to the Kellogg Foundation’s TRHT enterprise.

Each TRHT Great Stories Club theme was curated to help teens connect with powerful stories that feature racially diverse young people, consider and discuss embedded systems of racial hierarchy, envision a new American culture with a more expansive view of human equity, and begin to see themselves as an integral part of the narrative change process.

The project sought to bridge embedded divides and generate the will, capacities and resources required for achieving greater equity and healing, particularly in the lives of young adults facing personal challenges such as detention, incarceration, addiction, academic probation, poverty and homelessness.

Initial project planning was informed by work with a group of TRHT GSC . Reading lists and related content were developed by the .

Themes

With funding received from the Kellogg Foundation in 2017, 91´«Ã½ created three GSC themes that are informed by the . These include:

• Deeper than Our Skins: The Present Is a Conversation with the Past
• Finding Your Voice: Speaking Truth to Power

Each theme includes reading lists, recommended discussion questions, promotional materials and more. Materials are available, free of charge, to all libraries.

Other Resources

• , a TRHT Glossary of terms, collected resources on understanding structural racism, reading lists about race and racism, and information about the racial healing circle methodology championed by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
• Racial Healing Circle prompts
• (presented February 15, 2019, by Mee Moua and Monica Haslip, consultants to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation) and related slides
• (presented February 6, 2019, by Jody Gray, director of 91´«Ã½’s Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services) and related slides
• TRHT GSC Evaluation Resource Packet (PDF)
• TRHT GSC Theory of Change (PDF)

Program Impacts

Between 2017 and 2020, 91´«Ã½ made 130 grants to libraries for implementation of TRHT GSC programming series in 36 states nationwide. To learn more about these efforts, please visit