The Need

Despite the great diver­sity of the San Francisco Bay Area, we still face the chal­lenges of seg­re­ga­tion and prej­u­dice, as well as inter-group ten­sion and vio­lence. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Brown v. Board of Education ini­ti­ated the process of wide­spread deseg­re­ga­tion of American schools. Fifty-five years later, a 2009 report of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA revealed that schools are more seg­re­gated than they have been in over four decades, and that school seg­re­ga­tion is grow­ing. Our chil­dren con­tinue to grow up sur­rounded by stereo­types, often with lit­tle or no expo­sure to those dif­fer­ent from them­selves. This dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion breeds igno­rance and fear, feed­ing prej­u­dice and hatred, which in turn fuel vio­lence and fur­ther seg­re­ga­tion. The Mosaic Project works to break this cycle.

Many schools offer pro­grams that attempt to address issues of dif­fer­ence, but these often do so in a the­o­ret­i­cal way within a rel­a­tively homoge­nous envi­ron­ment. Most expe­ri­en­tial pro­grams that bring together stu­dents from diverse back­grounds wait until youth are in mid­dle or high school when neg­a­tive atti­tudes can already be entrenched.

The Mosaic Project, a 501(c)(3) non­profit, strate­gi­cally unites stu­dents of diverse back­grounds in our unique human-relations Outdoor School. We reach young peo­ple before they leave the shel­ter of ele­men­tary school for the larger, more com­plex envi­ron­ment of mid­dle school. We assist them in devel­op­ing the self-confidence and tools to suc­ceed as they encounter more peo­ple and more diver­sity in this new envi­ron­ment and through­out their lives.

The Pyramids of Hate & Peace

[Pyramid of Hate graphic] [Pyramid of Peace graphic]

The Mosaic Project works to dis­man­tle this pyra­mid of hate start­ing at its foun­da­tion and chip­ping away at each sup­port­ing level, includ­ing vio­lence. Our work aims to trans­form the pyra­mid of hate into the pyra­mid of peace.

Research in Contact Theory sup­ports our strat­egy, stat­ing that under the right con­di­tions, con­tact between mem­bers of dif­fer­ent groups can reduce con­flicts and prej­u­dices; how­ever, sim­ply plac­ing a diverse group of stu­dents together is not enough to break down stereo­types and prej­u­dice. Students also need to be together for pro­longed peri­ods of time; be treated as equals; share com­mon goals and have oppor­tu­ni­ties for coop­er­a­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and pos­i­tive, non­com­pet­i­tive inter­ac­tions with one another; and feel like their inter­min­gling is sup­ported by men­tors and author­ity figures. In addi­tion, issues of prej­u­dice have to be directly addressed.

Research sug­gests that the more of these fac­tors in place, the more likely peo­ple are to over­come their biases (Fiske, 2008; Van Laar, 2005). Effective com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tive con­flict res­o­lu­tion strate­gies also sup­port healthy inte­gra­tion across com­mu­ni­ties of dif­fer­ence (Maznevski & DiStefano, 1996). The Mosaic Project’s Outdoor School has every one of these fac­tors in place.