RED DOOR PROJECT

Portland, Oregon, 97217 United States

Mission Statement

Founded in 2011, The Red Door Project is an award-winning nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon. We envision a society where our differences catalyze listening, learning, and thoughtful action. Our mission is to leverage the power of stories to change racial ecology. Ecology is the interaction of differences to create mutual benefit. We believe that embracing our social, cultural, and racial differences leads to wholeness, and the way to change our ecology is to bring more difference into the spotlight. Our bold intention is that our work will help bring about systemic changes so that race, gender, nationality, income or other differences are not significant factors in how people are treated.

About This Cause

Our current focus is The Evolve Experience (Evolve), an innovative arts-based program that provides a framework for engaging in potentially divisive conversations, promotes empathy and trust, and helps participants build strategies for systemic change. Evolve centers around filmed monologues that present perspectives from both police officers and African American community members describing their lived experiences with race and policing. By using the arts as a springboard, Evolve seeks to stimulate conversation in a new way and help us to bridge a seemingly intractable divide. Facilitated discussion focuses on building skills that are crucial for successfully navigating change such as self-awareness, flexibility, curiosity and a willingness to grapple with complexity. We use stories because stories are how we learn. Our systems approach to exploring race and human interaction provides a framework for examining root causes of problems and needed policy changes, with the ultimate goal of creating a more equitable society. Though we present content about race and the justice system, our main intention is to increase people’s capacity to be curious about different points of view. The ability to hold greater complexity is a critical competency for navigating polarization, embracing difference, and creating change. Therefore, we ask participants in our programs to engage in open dialogue, witness multiple truths, discover shared values, and consider how to apply these learnings in everyday life.

RED DOOR PROJECT
6344 N Curtis Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97217
United States
Phone 5034510739
Unique Identifier 453729152