Opening Doors Apprentice Program: Overview

The Opening Doors Apprentice Program is designed for organizations that are committed to building internal capacity for facilitating Opening Doors workshops within their system.  The Opening Doors Diversity Project master trainers and mentors are skilled and experienced in supporting the implementation of this model.

Opening Doors: A Personal and Professional Journey is a highly-valued, research-based, three-day power and difference workshop for individuals and organizations.  Over 1700 participants from 37 national and international groups including government and community-development organizations, universities, school districts, and human service agencies, have attended since it was first developed in 1992.

Opening Doors is a unique training that fills a gap in diversity and inclusion training.  The holistic approach responds to the critical nature of diversity education for both a community’s and organization’s ability to deal with the complexity of issues being faced at this time.  It is a powerful tool for creating a flexible organization that can respond to the needs of its stakeholders.  The Opening Doors Apprentice Program is a fluid curriculum.  Graduates are able to respond from a theoretical base that allows them to provide unique responses to the unique situations they encounter.

The return on your investment is high.  When you invest in developing a Lead Facilitator of the Opening Doors retreat workshop, you develop a resource that can co-facilitate the Opening Doors workshop not only for your system, but others as well.  You also gain a staff person with the skills to:

• Design and deliver a full range of power and difference workshops designed to meet the unique needs of your organization;
• respond to complex interpersonal issues, helping each individual to see the broader picture and opening up constructive dialogue;
• provide individualized coaching support, nurturing targeted individuals to be more effective leaders in the system, helping people to think beyond where they are now; and
• serve as a resource to executive leadership, helping to strategize organizational growth and respond to issues that arise.

You can develop a facilitation team or an individual.  Investing in one person will allow you to collaborate with other organizations to co-host Opening Doors workshops.  Developing a facilitation team will allow you to serve your organization in-house, as well as contract to serve others.  The first graduating cohort (2007) of apprentices was sponsored by North Carolina State University, CALS.  They have since facilitated over 20 Opening Doors for 5 universities.  All are taking leadership on diversity in their systems and four are in formal leadership roles.

Click here to download the Opening Doors brochure. (Click here for brochure in Spanish.)