Keynote to Focus on Rebuilding Social Trust in Neighborhoods

This year’s Community Engaged Scholarship Forum, titled “Progress through Partnerships: Advancing Community Resilience,” will bring Pitt students, faculty, staff and community members together with leaders in higher education and community development to discuss topics including basic needs, civic participation, digital access and inclusion, education, health equity, criminal justice reform, and relationships and the social fabric.

Registration for the March 2 virtual event is open through Friday, Feb. 26. While programming runs from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, participants have the flexibility to choose to attend as many or as few sessions as they’d like and can come and go throughout the day and evening. Sessions are grouped around themes including relationships and our social fabric, criminal justice reform, health equity, and critical and liberatory practices in community engagement.

Find the full schedule, including session descriptions and speaker lists, on Accelevents, the platform for this year’s virtual forum.

Leading up to the third annual forum, which is presented by the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Engagement and the Office of the Provost, Pittwire is spotlighting four keynote and speaker sessions that feature experts and leaders from local and national universities and nonprofits.

Theme: Relationships and Our Social Fabric

Keynote at 2 p.m.: Weaving Community to Rebuild Social Trust

Social trust starts in our neighborhoods. It is the faith that people will see each other, act with a sense of shared humanity and do what they ought to do. This past year showed how much our trust in each other has eroded, with a bitter election, an unchecked pandemic, rising and unequal economic pain and overdue demands for racial justice. As we look to rebuild social trust so our nation can move forward, where do we start? How do we help our neighborhoods and local institutions more deeply understand one another and strengthen their connections?

Join Pitt School of Education’s Renée and Richard Goldman Dean Valerie Kinloch; Muffy Mendoza, executive director of Brown Mamas; Presley Gillespie, president of Neighborhood Allies; and Frederick Riley, executive director of Weave: The Social Fabric Project, a national project of The Aspen Institute, to explore ways for weaving communities and building bridges of trust as we chart a path ahead.