INLAND EMPIRE
ABOUT BEI
The Black Equity Initiative (BEI) is a coalition of Black led organizations formed in 2014 with a shared desire to improve the Black community through empowerment, education, and policy change.
Within the Black Equity Initiative is the Black Equity Initiative Funds with Grantees. The Black Equity Fund is a regionally-focused, culturally-rooted group of Black-led organizations developing a shared agenda for policy and systems change that lifts Black communities across the Inland Empire.
Nguzo Saba
Values & Principles
Umoja
Unity
To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
Kujichagulia
Self-Determination
To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
Ujima
Collective Work & Responsibility
To build and maintain our community together and make our community's problems our problems and to solve them together.
Ujamaa
Cooperative Economics
To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
Nia
Purpose
To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
Kuumba
Creativity
To do always as much as we can to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
Imani
Faith
To believe with all our hearts in our people and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.