Community Spotlight: International House
For our first community spotlight, we had the pleasure of talking to Shelly Gilbride from International House here in Davis. Shelly is the Executive Director of I-House and started her position there last year. She has been a local Davis resident for the past 16 years where she has been active in the celebration of cultural diversity as Programs Officer of the California Arts Council.
We had a great talk about the efforts in continuing this cultural exchange in light of COVID-19, the fight for racial justice, and what I-House is doing to best support our community in these times. Read more below to learn about International House and their great work in tackling these issues!
What is International House Davis?
We are a Davis community non-profit organization dedicated to cross-cultural exchange and exploring the global issues at the time. I-House is a social gathering space that strives to make sure all people feel a sense of belonging and welcoming in our community. At the moment, we are providing virtual gathering opportunities due to COVID-19.
What kind of events does I-House develop or partake in?
We do tons of events throughout the year. Our program includes an international parent community that meets every Friday and discusses issues of parenting. It’s really a networking group to support parents within our community. We also have a community gathering of people on Wednesday mornings called Connections to allow local and international people to meet one another, share, and be in a community with another. We also have language and conversation classes, and you can practice around 11 different languages here. However, our biggest event of the year is the International Festival, which usually takes place in October at Central Park in Davis. It’s a festival of all the cultures that contribute to our community. We have dance, music, and food from all over the world to really highlight and uplift communities, especially marginalized communities that aren’t at the forefront.
How has I-House been doing?
COVID-19 and moments of racial injustice are challenging for everyone. With COVID-19, I-House has been closed for the public since March, and we were looking to open on August 1st. However, that’s not likely right now due to the increase of COVID-19 cases and we do not have revenue. I don’t know how any non-profit or for-profit organization is going to survive without more support from our government and our community. We’ve done some online lectures, talks, and programming but a majority of our events are closed and we’re really preparing for what it means to open again.
In terms of the fight for racial justice, I-House has always been a place that celebrates diversity. Our mission and vision are to make sure all of the contributions of the cultural groups in our community are recognized and appreciated. In light of the occurrences in the last couple of months, this has only further revealed how much further we have to go.
What is I-Fest going to look like this year?
We are thinking of how to utilize International Festival to its fullest potential. The focus is to make the contributions of our cultural communities in the Davis region central and visible, and celebrate those communities. While we have always celebrated unity and diversity, we’re going to be a little more intentional with highlighting the contributions of BIPOC communities. Accompanied with that, we are in the really interesting and challenging struggle of how to do that during COVID-19.
I-Fest is going to be on the first Sunday of October (October 4, 2020). It’s most likely going to a much smaller event in the park that will have physically distanced audience, but it will be online as well. We’re currently working out what that looks like, but most likely we’re going to have an online directory of cultural groups. All the cultural groups in the region will have an online profile on the I-Fest website that will give a little profile, showcase videos and photos, and will be filtered with whether they are music, dance, storytelling, historical, oral tradition and language groups. We’re also working out how to do the live stream broadcast for I-Fest. It’s a much more extensive event to do online and we’re trying to figure out what that means for us because this is the event that actually supports all of our programs throughout the year.
How is I-House addressing the fight against racial injustice?
I recognize that I am also a white leader of a non-profit and understand that white women have particularly found places of leadership in the non-profit world. As accomplices, allies, and abolitionists, we need to do better at recognizing that we have often reached places leadership and have been complicit. In terms of the fight against racial injustice, I feel a responsibility personally to internally investigate I-House’s ways of working and externally make sure that our programming is uplifting the contributions of BIPOC communities. We’re doing internal work to make sure that our processes in they way that we hire and program are really exploring the ways that we are part of the nonprofit industrial complex, and how we can push against that to make sure that our internal workings are fighting against white supremacy. And then externally, in our public spacing work, making sure that we support BIPOC communities and publicly promote anti-racism.
What do you think we can do as individuals and allies to stand in support with the fight against racial injustice?
Number 1, I think as individuals we can educate ourselves. I’ve heard of a lot of reading groups and book clubs in Davis for White Fragility and How to be Antiracist. There’s also a lot of resources out there on the internet as well. Number 2, it’s making sure that the education is facilitated and not done in a vacuum of white-ness. Davis has a predominately white demographic, so it’s easy to be insular.
This is also coming as my perspective as a white woman, but we have to not be afraid take the criticism and learn to be better. And that comes through making sure that we are communicating with the people of color in our lives. So that’s part of he reason why I-House is working with April Jean from Impact Foundry to do the really hard internal work to analyze our own complicity in the system and then to really be accomplices in the work and call it out when we see it.
As a town in Davis, I think there’s some great work being done by some of our city council members. Will Arnold, in particular, is working on how to reframe and reposition the police department. Solidarity Space is doing great work to continue to make BLM visible in our community. We did an anti-racism panel that got a lot of attendance. And that was showcasing just a few antiracism leaders in Davis and in Sacramento. Davis is interconnected in our region and there’s great work being done in Sacramento with their Decolonization Project and Black and White Shut it Down. There’s really great work and it’s just uplifting and supporting that work that is really important.
How can we make sure that the activism we do is not just a performance? How do you make sure this movement isn’t just a trend?
I think that the performance does serve a purpose in that it is a public demonstration of your values and I believe that we still need that. But that’s just the first step, and the next steps are what are the actions, internally and externally, that we are going to take to change the system with our processes and policies. For I-House, we must make sure to recognize this is in an international context. For us, it’s not just anti-racism work in the United States, we also serve the international community. We are thinking of anti-oppression work in global communities, because many of our members are not from here and may only be here for a short period of time.
We also need to look at the fatigue that is among the people that have been organizing the marches. We need to give them the space to rejuvenate and keep up the fight because it’s exhausting for the people that have been organizing marches and have been on top of it. I’m sure it’s exhausting to be in the constant educating mode, especially in our town where we have been looking to our communities of color to help guide us.
How do you think the events are going to change as restrictions are slowly getting lifted?
I definitely think events are going to be smaller. We are also getting assessed right now to increase our technology to do more of hybrid programming, where some people may be in the space, but some people may be participating online and virtually from their homes. We don’t currently have a definitive answer as to what that will look like, but we do know that the values that are driving us have never been more important. Uplifting communities and making sure that all communities feel safe and welcome here in Davis and the Yolo county hasn’t changed. We’re trying to figure out how we can uplift those communities as we deal with COVID-19 and the events of racist texts and incidents of police brutality.
How have you been able to connect with your members amidst this and how have volunteers been able to help local members of the community feel safe?
Most connections have been online. We have an online newsletter that goes out every week. . We’re connecting to people through Zoom, our newsletter, and through some online programming. We have a virtual exhibit of a local artist work called Communidad by Stephanie Thayer. While in quarantine, she has done a series of portraits of local community leaders and cultural leaders. We are showing them online and hoping to have an in-person showing of that in September.
What are you most looking forward to once our shelter-in-place order is lifted?
I am looking forward to social connection. I miss being able to connect with people in real-time and real place. That being said, we’re working on the ways to do that safely, and thinking about the protocols that need to be taken in order to do that safely. I’m definitely looking forward to when we have a vaccine and when we can fully be in public space again and not have to worry about physical distancing. I also really miss music and dance. We work with Mamadou Traore, who is a local African drummer. While he has transitioned to doing drumming circles online, there is still something lost when you don’t feel the rhythm of the drum in person. A lot of the things we do at I-House is for the celebration of music and dance, so I really hope we get to a place where we’re really enjoying the arts together again.
What do you like the most about working in the Davis community and what has been your favorite part about developing I-House here?
I’ve been living in Davis for about 13 years, but I’ve only been at I-House for less than a year. We’re in a leadership transition at I-House and really thinking about what I-House is going to be in the future. We are especially looking at how we’re going to stand in solidarity in the fight against oppression and racism. I think that I-House is the place to explore the global issues of our time. When I started at I-House almost a year ago, I did an informal community survey about what are the biggest global issues that we should be exploring. The things that kept coming back were climate change and racism. Though I’ve always felt a sense of urgency to address these issues, now more than ever, I think we’re trying to figure out and approach that with a sense of community and solidarity.
Is there anything the local community can do to help with International House?
We’re always looking for volunteers, particularly for the International Festival coming up in the fall. We need a lot of volunteers for that event, and it’s such an awesome event. If people have translation skills, we would love help with that. We are also always looking for people interested in potentially doing programs.
What are some tips you have for those starting work in non-profit organizations?
I think in terms of working in non-profit, the wonderful thing is that non-profits rely on people learning as they go and people doing tons of different jobs. You could be working on a grant one day, planning an event one day, fixing a door the next, or answering phones. You do everything, and there’s a breakdown of the traditional hierarchy where people can be given leadership positions. With working for a nonprofit, you’re working for something that you really believe in. You also get such a wide range of experience because you could be doing social media, marketing, development, fundraising, and programming; you could do it all. So you’re kind of getting a bit of everything in non-profit. Similar to entrepreneurship, if there’s something you want to do, you just go out and do it.
Contact info
If you have any questions about I-House for Shelly, you can contact her at shelly@ihousedavis.org!
