A Campaign Benefiting The inclusive Leadership institute
By donating in the honor of Verdia Lee Haywood you help us continue his important work with our Inclusive Leadership Institute.
Verdia Lee Haywood was the Deputy County Executive for Fairfax County Human Services. He was known as the architect of the Health and Human Services System.
During Verdia’s tenure, he recalled, “We’d been looking at this [issues of disproportionality] for years, developing traditional programs to cope, and investing substantial sums, but these programs had an overall minimal impact. We weren’t dealing directly with the issue.”
He convened “Together We’re the Answer,” a community collaborative, to think through why African -Americans were over-represented in the foster care system. Composed predominantly of African-American government, business, community, and faith leaders, “Together We’re the Answer” strove to engage the larger community in foster care issues, and eventually education, health, juvenile justice, and, more generally, child welfare. “Together We’re the Answer” was an important early step, bringing leaders together to discuss social problems explicitly in terms of race at a time when such discussions were unusual in Fairfax County. These are the seeds that led to the development of the County’s One Fairfax Policy.
Leadership Fairfax honored Mr. Haywood as the first recipient of the Kate Handley Award in 2006. We are honored to continue the work of his legacy through our Inclusive Leadership Institute (ILI). ILI deepens leaders understanding of the historical foundations and the consequences of racism in systems and in the Fairfax County community.
The Inclusive Leadership Institute (ILI) is a program for leaders living or working in Fairfax County that seek to deepen their understanding of the historical foundations and the consequences of racism in systems and in the Fairfax County community. ILI adopts a unique and structured dialogue approach, guiding participants through a comprehensive exploration starting from understanding the historical foundations, to current systems.
