Our Misson
To improve the health and well-being of marginalized communities by mobilizing the nonprofit, philanthropic, and public sectors to address life-threatening crises and racial and systemic inequities.
Our Vision
The RRT envisions a St. Louis region where:
- Collaborative, equitable, and effective responses to life-threatening crises and racial disparities are standard practice.
- New approaches to partnership transform organizational and systems behaviors in ways that remove race as a predictor of life outcomes.
- A culture of accountability emerges within the nonprofit, philanthropic, and public sectors that centers community priorities and experiences in decision-making.
- Marginalized communities, and the organizations that serve them, receive heightened levels of investment and support, eliminating the conditions of vulnerability that imperil their existence.
Our Guiding Principles
Center Racial Equity and Commitment to Anti-Racism
- Individuals and communities most impacted by long-standing racial discrimination and disinvestment must be the focus of our regional transformation.
- Economic development in historically disinvested communities must be prioritized.
- We identify and change white supremacy culture in our organizations (e.g., power hoarding; either/or thinking; perfectionism) identified by anti-racism frameworks like those offered by Tema Okun and others.
Partner Intentionally with Impacted Individuals and Communities
- Impacted individuals and representatives of impacted communities are part of the decision-making process.
- We recognize and respect the strengths, assets, wisdom, and resilience in impacted communities and acknowledge the need for resources to support community-based organizations.
- We support, amplify, and credit grassroots efforts and organizations.
- We hold ourselves accountable to community partners for inclusion and make meaningful changes when we fall short.
- We share our work with impacted individuals and communities broadly and transparently.
Orient Towards Action, Solutions, and Coordinated Regional Action
- We bridge the bi-state region in our activities, recognizing that no single jurisdiction, sector, institution or organization can create systemic change alone.
- We leverage the unique strengths of individual organizations to contribute to shared goals.
- We align with existing disaster response (e.g., SLARCC, COADs) in times of crisis.
- We act with urgency to address needs in and out of moments of crisis.
- We share our work with impacted individuals and communities broadly and transparently.
Adopt Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Equity Principles
- Disaggregate data by race, ethnicity, age, disability and other demographics.
- Identify and address policy gaps while advocating for federal support.
- Invest in healthcare, public health, and social infrastructure to foster resilience.
- Establish and empower teams dedicated to promoting racial equity in response and recovery efforts.
- Include in decision-making the people most affected by health and economic challenges and benchmark progress based on their outcomes.