The Institute for Advancing Unity

The Institute for Advancing Unity is an education organization that brings together the most promising resources and practices to forge the relationships from which UNITY is born.

A Distinctive Approach

While many organizations today are engaged in activities related to social change, the Institute for Advancing Unity (formerly the Capital Unity Council) is distinguished by several characteristics, including

• our understanding of learning styles and integration of teaching principles;
• our ability to identify and combine best practices into comprehensive models;
• our status as a cross-disciplinary expert resource and capacity-builder;
• our commitment to research, evaluation, and testing;
• and our creative use of technology.

Together, these assets enable youth and other participants in our programs to move beyond awareness and into actions that build UNITY.

The Institute Today

Since 1999, the Institute has advanced community-based initiatives that build UNITY. These programs are designed to educate youth to recognize and celebrate their own power and value, and encourage them to make choices that inspire others to join them in building UNITY.

The Institute promotes policies, programs and opportunities to improve school climates, eliminate prejudice and violence, and institutionalize UNITY as a community value. Through collaborative efforts like the School Climate Consortium, the Institute provides expertise and facilitates the sharing of research, information and resources among educators, communities, non-profits, and policy makers. 

The Future of The Institute: The UNITY Lab

The Institute is raising funds to build a permanent facility, the UNITY Lab, where participants will “walk in the shoes” of others, understand the importance of respect for others and themselves, and celebrate those who have overcome the challenges of prejudice and violence.

The UNITY Lab will serve as a national laboratory for researching, field-testing, and sharing methodologies, programs, and best practices— a hub for discovery, discussion, and dissemination of proven tools and new approaches that can be replicated in any community. Its presence will signal that UNITY is an essential and valued component of a thriving community, state, and nation. Learn more.

Vision

The Institute for Advancing Unity’s vision is to be the catalyst for empowering people to be champions of UNITY in their lives, their communities, and the world. Experience it for yourself— watch our vision video.

The tenets of this vision are:

Understand one another’s perspectives

Nonviolent action to effect social, individual, and community change

Include everyone in the process

Teach one another how to be champions of UNITY

You can make a difference!

Mission

The Institute for Advancing Unity is an education organization whose mission is to create transformational experiences where people learn about the consequences of prejudice and violence, practice tools that foster harmony, and make choices that empower themselves and others to build UNITY.