Gender Equity UPF

Gender Equity

An Urban Peacemaker Fellowship

The Urban Peacemaker Fellowship (UPF) is a Street Psalms training initiative. Led by Street Psalms Senior Fellows, our 10 Urban Peacemaker Fellowships work to equip the head, heart and hands of urban leaders to love their city and seek its peace with the Gospel of Jesus.

How does Street Psalms (board, staff, senior fellows) reflect the gifts and diversity of the cities we are called to serve (with specific focus on gender equity throughout the network)?

Street Psalms, as an organization, is holding its own Urban Peacemaker Fellowship, in which leaders are gathered for generative dialogue around a missional question to initiate creative incarnational action in response.

Led by Senior Fellow Lina Thompson, this cohort consists of Street Psalms Staff and board members. We selected our missional question because our lack of gender equity at the level of organizational leadership (Staff, Board and Senior Fellows) has become a barrier to our mission and violates the vision and values we hold dear.

The cohort began to wrestle with this question by having discussions facilitated by Rebecca Perrault, an expert in diversity & inclusion. This led to a conversation about barriers – what is keeping Street Psalms from fully reflecting the diversity of the communities we serve? In response, three webinars were planned with guest facilitators: (1) Theological Barriers/Opportunities, (2) Cultural Barriers/Opportunities, and (3) Personal & Organizational Barriers/Opportunities.

Through these webinars and other UPF gatherings, this cohort is developing and implementing a plan to hold Street Psalms accountable to achieving its mission through a more holistic representation of the network it serves. The plan addresses gender equity at the structural, leadership level of the organization with specific focus on the board, staff and senior fellows, trusting this will model Street Psalms’ vision and values for the network it serves.