Critical Futures

Faybra Jabulani is the Lead Racial Equity Capacity Catalyst of Forward Through Ferguson (FTF). She leads the Build Racial Equity Capacity and Community Partnership Strategies, guiding the management of the Racial Healing & Justice Fund, and FTF’s overall facilitative engagements. She is an experienced facilitator, grounding in systems thinking, courageous conversations, and restorative practice. She specializes in next practices of growing capacity for the successful development of anti-bias and antiracist institutions. She has dedicated 12 years of service to the St. Louis community within Nonprofit advancement, Education, and DEIA sectors.

Like many living in St. Louis Metro East, Michelle Barbeau didn’t find the impacts of racism to begin with the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson. After years of enduring racial inequity, Barbeau began looking for ways to create positive change in her communities and to build a world nourishing to her young child. She’s especially proud of the work that the Racial Healing + Justice Fund (RHJF) has done and the role she’s played on the fund’s Community Governance Board. Originally a military brat from Southern Illinois, Michelle has been in St. Louis for 17 years and currently resides with her family in St. Louis County.

Forward Through Ferguson is a civic and social impact organization designed to serve as a racial equity advocate and systems change catalyst. The organizaion’s mission: “Embracing the Ferguson Commission’s mandate, Forward Through Ferguson centers impacted communities and mobilizes accountable bodies to advance racially equitable systems and policies that ensure all people in the St. Louis region can thrive.”

Highlighted Work:

• • The St. Louis Regional Racial Healing + Justice Fund
  • Transforming911
  • Still Compromising: The Disparate Impact of COVID-19 in St. Louis  
  • Still Separate, Still Unequal: Education Inequity in St. Louis 

The Institute for Healing Justice & Equity (the Institute or IHJE) aims to eliminate disparities caused by systemic oppression and to improve individual and community health and well-being through systems change and deep community partnership. As part of these core goals, IHJE created a panel of content experts, community advocates, and organizations called the Anti-Racism Consortium. Each consortium member has a history of working to:

• develop and advocate for anti-racist health policy;
• address the root causes of health inequities; and
• develop programs and interventions that address multiple levels of medical racism, structural racism in health and the health care system.

In the Critical Futures podcast series, Consortium members describe their work and perspectives related to anti-racist health policy as well as structural racism in the healthcare system. These interviews are also conducted with a community partner that the members have worked alongside — with the goal of highlighting how to deeply work with community in a way that shares power and that moves us all towards liberation.