Twenty-one men came together for the first of its kind roundtable discussion addressing how F3 intersects with real world issues.  This discussion was not about fixing anything, coming up with an action plan rather it was an opportunity to share perspective, feel each other’s pain and to understand.  On this day, we continued the conversation on the opportunities to improve racial tension in our community through F3.  We started a conversation on the vision for F3, things we must consider and next steps with some personal challenges sprinkled in for good measure.

Vision: <No different than F3’s mission> Invigorate male community leadership <across our diverse community>

• How do we make our circle more representative of our community? (At 95%+ white we are not representative)
• How do we give “it” away and invigorate leadership within the Black/Hispanic communities?
• How do we create more experiences for PAX to engage in this topic?

Things to Address:

• Offer alternate work out times to include different work shifts and men who aren’t early birds (e.g. Run N Gun is an existing option to leverage)
• Have workout locations of workouts to be convenient to other socio economic and cultural groups
• End any bigoted or racial intolerance within PAX and remove these elements to ensure the circle is inviting to all groups
• Build relationships with minorities and avoid making our outreach look and feel like charity
• Change requires small intentional steps that start with our willingness to be vulnerable and uncomfortable to share life with people that are different than us

Personal Challenges:

• Empathy is created through relationships…expand our personal networks to include diverse racial and socio-economic statuses in and outside of F3
• There is no …“Them.” We can move forward once we recognize that all people want respect and love

Next Steps:

• Create a monthly theme on “Empathy” to continue the focus on the theme (likely January)
• Identify a Q (or pair of Qs) to drive future discussions, activities, develop programs, etc
• Come together for another conversation to continue the discussion (December)