John E Kobara :Last week, I participated in an emotional and inspirational vigil to advocate for compassion and unity after the San Bernardino shootings. I joined the Japanese-American community in Los Angeles, along with Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, and many other denominations gathered in a showing of support to condemn the violence, remember the victims and rally against Islamophobia.As a Japanese-American, I am particularly inflamed by some of the rhetoric being used against American Muslims. My parents and all of their families were illegally rounded up and put into concentration camps during WWII solely because of their appearance and national origin. Fear and ignorance created hysteria and 120,000 Americans were stripped of their status and belongings by their own country. Hate for the enemy was imposed on the American citizens who looked like them.I remember with pride when the Japanese American community stood with Muslim Americans right after 9/11 to condemn the terrorism and to call for sanity and compassion amidst the outbreaks of hateful speech and actions.Here we go again.These are especially difficult, tense and challenging times. The volatile issues of race, religion, globalization, immigration, inequality, power, transparency, gun violence and terrorism are all around us. As foundations what do we do? We have to stop and look within. What is our role as a community leader? Who are our partners? Are we connected to the realities of the issues we are addressing? What can we do in addition to giving money? What is our philanthropic vigilance?We have a responsibility to build institutions that focus on change, impact the long arc of social justice. And we have to build institutions that can adapt to the ever changing world. At each of our foundations we have hardware and software. The human part is the software and this is what makes us adaptable, creative and relevant. It is our people who make us smart and connected to reality. We believe that one person, that one foundation can make a difference.The California Community Foundation (CCF) privately prides itself on having one of the most diverse foundation boards and staffs in the United States. It’s not a competition that we’re trying to win. We believe in our DNA that diversity of perspectives-a true multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-geographic conversation-is a stronger, much more strategic, much more responsive conversation than one that is mono-cultural, mono-ethnic and mono-religious.Non-diverse boards and staffs assume certain things about others when they aren’t represented to add value with some reality and truth to the discussion. You just can’t talk about people when they’re not in the room. I believe it is bad business and, in philanthropy, it’s just ignorant.So there are fundamental structural challenges that we have to make as a sector, to become more grounded to the issues and communities that are served by our missions. It is work that is never quite done, it takes persistence and vigilance.At CCF we have had our own ignorant blind spots. We felt really good about the United Nations like team we had built. But self-satisfaction comes with a cost of complacency. We took on an initiative a few years ago called One Los Angeles, One Nation to support increased civic and philanthropic engagement of American Muslim communities in Los Angeles County. The initiative addressed misperceptions of the American Muslim community post 9/11 by partnering with and supporting non-profits serving American Muslims and integrating this work across CCF’s portfolio through collaborations.We hired Elica Vafaie, an Iranian-American woman of Muslim heritage with a stellar background in social justice and civic engagement of Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities to run this program. She became our first and only ambassador to the Muslim community at CCF. Luckily Elica was no wallflower, we usually screen for that?. Elica pushed us, educated all of us on AMEMSA culture, religion, food and the state of the Muslim community in LA. Our ignorance was laid bare and all of CCF was introduced to another significant facet of the prism of diversity that is Los Angeles. (John E. Kobara is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the California Community Foundation, based in Los Angeles).
