PASOs, the Office of Family and Community Engagement (FACE), and the South Carolina Collaborative for Race and Reconciliation hosted a virtual training series focused on intentional approaches to understanding and integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion for education-based professionals. The facilitators of these trainings were Mr. Mike Young and Dr. Jennifer Gunter. Mr. Young, the Co-Interim Executive Director of PASOs, is a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology with a strong reputation for confronting serious issues that shape the way our realities are determined along racial lines, but in a welcoming and engaging manner. Dr. Gunter is the director for the South Carolina Collaborative for Race and Reconciliation within the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of South Carolina and conducts powerful roundtable sessions where individuals reflect on their own internalized and unknown prejudices while working toward rectifying them and also positively encouraging others around them to do the same.  

This collaborative effort involved dynamic and interactive training sessions/conversations designed to provide working professionals with information and action steps that allowed for increased cultural competency/humility to best address the needs and strengths of the communities in which they engage with an emphasis on how it shapes education, students, and educators. By understanding the human experiences of others through multiple lenses, this training series provided new ways for education professionals to be better equipped to interact and engage with the wide range of diverse communities that make up South Carolina’s landscape.