Multicultural Resource Center

The Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) was formed in 1987 by Marcia Fort, a woman of color & leader in the community and Eileen Brown a white ally, as a project of the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC). It formed to address the lack of ethnic, cultural cross-community understanding in schools and communities in Ithaca by starting a multicult... ural resource library located in the Beverly J. Martin public elementary school. The MRC was incorporated on January 1, 1998. MRC's transformative programs, events, and projects are conducted by several coordinators and community organizers, as well as supported by student interns and community volunteers. MRC engages in cultural and systemic transformation by building with our communities to eliminate barriers to racial justice, cultural dignity, equity and inclusion, and indigenous rights. COMMUNITY & CULTURAL ORGANIZING: We conduct and support grassroots participation and activities that lift up underrepresented narratives and work centering people of color, indigenous peoples, low-income, and LGBTQ+ people. EDUCATION AND CAPACITY-BUILDING: We conduct and support teaching and learning communities that engage in transformative learning, collective action and conscious cultural development. SYSTEMIC ACCOUNTABILITY: We conduct and support sustainable systemic transformation within individuals, community agencies and institutions. We honor the fundamental dignity, sovereignty, and inherent power of all people! Our commitment to the changes we wish to inform and inspire in our communities are guided by the following ways of working: We honor our human rights, challenge injustice and resist systems of oppression. We honor First Peoples knowledge, our elders, and the histories of our communities. We honor seeing and being seen, listening and being heard. We honor intergenerational collective leadership. We honor leading with cultural intelligence. We honor leading from knowledge that is experiential, lived and comes from first-person voice. We honor accountability to ...Read More