Dear Community,
So much has happened since we last shared with you! Our team developed and created a 2-evening trainings for our Catalyst Dinner hosts. We trained 43 hosts, providing a background on race relations and some techniques to manage difficult and uncomfortable conversations.
Our hosts then went out to host 28 Catalyst Dinners in their homes, churches, and businesses. Each dinner was unique and participants walked away with different experiences. One dinner went so well, it lasted almost five hours! Our dinners culminated on Sunday, March 24 when we brought together over 200 guests to celebrate our dinners and engage in continued cross-racial conversation. At our event, we unveiled a painting commissioned by Bryant Benoit to commemorate the experience of our hosts and guests.
We are in the final phase of our project and working alongside our researcher, Dr. Danielle Fastring, to analyze the impact of the Catalyst dinners on hosts, guests, and the community. Our goal was not to have immediate solutions but to move people along the continuum from uninformed to informed, from informed to concerned, and from concerned to active. We can’t wait to dig into our data and see how our dinners were able to accomplish that.
-Ashley Mudd and Skyra Rideaux
Team Longest Table