2025 Year in Review
Dear Community,
As we move into 2026 and reflect on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement this month, I’m reminded that the march toward equity and justice is a long journey shaped by both progress and challenge. Movements for freedom and liberation teach us that this work is marked by progress, backlash, and the steady choice to keep going anyway.
Across sectors, leaders and organizations are facing real constraints. Resources are contracting. Commitments are being abandoned. And still, communities are living under fear, surveillance, and state violence—meeting repression with clarity, resolve, and a refusal to be silenced.
Throughout 2025, working with a small team and tighter budgets, we stayed focused on what leaders and communities needed:
•Launching strategic tools to navigate the anti-DEI landscape,
•Training healthcare providers and patients when health equity programs faced elimination
•Creating healing spaces for Black changemakers, and
•Facilitating community engagement processes where residents shape decisions that affect their lives
This newsletter reflects the work we’re carrying forward this year: equipping leaders with strategy and tools, strengthening capacity across sectors, and advancing the belief that sustainable justice requires both structural change and practices of care.
We won’t pretend this moment isn’t hard, but we’re moving forward with intention—supporting the leaders and organizations as they navigate what’s ahead. Thank you for being part of the CURE community and carrying this work forward with us.
With love and power,
Judy Lubin, PhD, MPH
President, Center for Urban and Racial Equity
“The retreat came at a critical point in my life and career. 2025 has been heavy both personally and professionally. I am grateful for the reminders about self care, being able to practice tools that I have brought home and connection to a new community of wounded healers who believe that we can be healthy as we heal our communities.“
— 2025 Retreat Participant
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN
3rd Annual Embodied Justice Retreat
July 30–August 2, 2026 | Limited Space Available
For those who feel the weight of change work in their bones and spirits, the Embodied Justice Retreat offers a unique opportunity to pause, ground ourselves, and build the strength needed for the journey ahead. Nestled in the serene beauty of the Georgia mountains, this retreat offers space for collective healing, renewal, and embodiment practices that center Black joy, resilience, and liberation.
Entering our third year of this transformative offering, the Embodied Justice Retreat is more than a restorative space. It’s:
• Movement-sustaining – equipping leaders with tools and practices for rest, renewal, and sustained impact
• Community-building – strengthening a network of Black changemakers
• Transformative – shifting how leaders show up to activism, justice, and healing work
Crafted with love and care, and designed with input from Black changemakers, this retreat is more than an event—it’s a necessary intervention to sustain those leading racial equity, justice, and community change efforts.
Last year’s impact:
• 9 out of 10 participants left with a deeper sense of rest, presence, and wholeness
• 100% reported feeling more grounded, inspired, or resourced to continue their work
• 100% rated the experience 5.0/5 overall
While this retreat is designed for Black changemakers, we encourage our allies to share this opportunity with those in their circles who would benefit from this transformative experience. In a year where funding for this work has significantly contracted, we’re committed to keeping the Embodied Justice Retreat accessible. If you’re not able to attend but want to support the changemakers who will join us, we invite you to donate to support hardship scholarships and help keep registration costs accessible. Your contribution directly expands who can participate and ensures that leaders can access the rest and the community they need.
APPLY NOW | SUPPORT THE RETREAT
2025 In Action: How We Showed Up
Here’s how we showed up in 2025—and what we’re building for the year ahead.
Equity Forward: Strategic Defense in the Anti-DEI Era
When federal, state, and corporate attacks on DEI intensified—with executive orders dismantling programs, universities eliminating diversity offices, and companies backpedaling on equity commitments—CURE launched Equity Forward to help leaders navigate this unprecedented assault with strategic clarity:
• DEI Timeline – Our most-viewed webpage, mapping federal actions, state legislation, and corporate rollbacks to help leaders anticipate threats and understand patterns
• Issue briefs – Practical tools and resources to understand executive orders and sustain equity commitments
• Two major webinars – Legal scholars and strategists offering guidance on legal risks, narrative reframing, and the historical evolution of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies and practices
• Facilitated dialogues on resilience and care – Conference sessions and webinar discussions exploring the current political landscape and self and community care practices for equity practitioners navigating this moment
Health Equity Trainings and Convenings: Capacity Building in Critical Times
While health equity programs face elimination at federal agencies and academic institutions, CURE deepened our commitment to advancing equitable, trauma-informed care through strategic partnerships across healthcare and community sectors.
In 2025, we partnered with:
Healthcare systems and reproductive health organizations – Delivering multi-session Foundations of Health Equity training for practitioners, administrators, and clinic staff on structural racism in health systems, trauma-informed care, and organizational change
Community health organizations – Facilitating Navigating Healthcare Encounters training for patients and families on advocating for themselves in clinical settings, addressing bias and communication barriers, and navigating power dynamics to improve health outcomes
A maternal mental health equity learning community – Supporting seven community-based organizations serving Black, Indigenous, and Latino families through leadership development, technical assistance, and capacity building
We also delivered Organizational Wellness: Building a Culture of Care & Sustainability workshops for community leadership programs, helping organizations strengthen their internal practices while advancing external impact.
Our training approach centers participant experience, blends historical context with real-world application, and builds sustained organizational capacity. CURE’s health equity training and technical assistance services can be tailored to your healthcare system, nonprofit, or public agency.
Community Engagement Strategy: Reflections from the Field
Across our work, a shared question continues to guide us: how do we move from community engagement as consultation toward models grounded in shared decision-making, accountability, and care? As we support two distinct community engagement efforts in 2026, this question is shaping how we design, facilitate, and learn alongside communities.
In Washington, DC, CURE is facilitating ecosystem mapping with Ward 8 residents and nonprofits—examining what governance structures truly support community leadership, not just participation. In Massachusetts, we’re partnering with a regional planning commission as they design a 10-year, $10 million fund for women- and people of color-owned businesses, building accountability and transparency into resource distribution from the start.
Early lessons emerging from this work:
•When we avoid naming power dynamics explicitly, we often end up reinforcing them.
•When we invite communities to participate but aren’t upfront about what their feedback can actually change—or how it will be used—we create frustration and broken trust.
•And directing funding toward Black and Brown communities isn’t equity unless those communities have real power over how resources are governed, allocated, and sustained.
This work is slower than many expect and requires sitting with complexity, building relationships, and trusting the knowledge communities already hold. We approach it as facilitators and learners committed to engagement practices that strengthen shared power and lead to more just, durable outcomes.
If your organization is navigating complex community and resident engagement or seeking more authentic ways to share power across difference, we’d welcome the conversation about how CURE can support your work. CONTACT US
COMING THIS SPRING
Healing-Centered Leadership Training Series
For leaders navigating conflict, holding difficult conversations, and building trust in challenging times
We’re expanding our offerings to support leaders navigating increasingly complex terrain.
This three-module training series equips nonprofit leaders, organizers, government staff, and community practitioners with practical tools to facilitate groups, navigate conflict, and respond to harm in ways that build trust and support long-term change.
Three modules (can be taken individually or as a series):
Grounded Leadership for Changemakers
Explore how stress, urgency, and systems of oppression shape your leadership and develop somatic practices, boundary-setting skills, and connection to cultural wisdom that ground you in any role across the change ecosystem. You’ll craft a personal leadership declaration that clarifies your values, commitments, and sources of strength.
Facilitating for Healing and Justice
Build skills to facilitate meetings where power dynamics are present, notice who’s speaking and who isn’t, and intervene when harm occurs. Learn concrete techniques for managing defensiveness and creating spaces for difficult conversations.
Restorative & Transformative Justice in Practice
This training equips leaders with restorative and transformative justice frameworks to respond to conflict and harm through accountability, repair, and collective learning. Participants learn how to prepare for and facilitate restorative processes and design collective care practices that build trust and healing in organizations and communities.
Registration opens February 2026.
Support Our Work
Your support fuels transformative programs like the Embodied Justice Program and critical community partnerships. Together, we can continue to create spaces of care, connection, and liberation for changemakers and communities across the country.
Every contribution, big or small, helps sustain and grow this vital work.
