Our Mission and Values

Our Mission

Vermont Humanities seeks to engage all Vermonters in the world of ideas, foster a culture of thoughtfulness, and inspire a lifelong love of reading and learning.

Our Values

Working draft

At Vermont Humanities, we strive to play a central role in integrating the humanities into the educational, civic, and economic life of our state. Since everyone explores what it means to be human, we commit to eliminating barriers that keep people from believing that the humanities can include them.

• Equity. We’ll use our programs to help address historic gaps in power between groups and to amplify under-represented voices.
• Community. Our work will enable people to form bonds across boundaries, develop channels of cooperation, and nurture resiliency in their local communities and statewide.
• Partnership. We’ll build and grow long-term partnerships with communities and organizations and form a broader spectrum of partners across racial, class, and geographic lines.
• Humility. While we can use our platform to highlight the work of our partners, we’ll recognize that we aren’t always the ones with the answers, and that we have much to learn from these partners.
• Curiosity. We’ll help Vermonters learn about the world and themselves at all stages of their lives and encourage them as they engage with the humanities in the ways they find most compelling.
• Relationships. We’ll foster sustainable and healthy relationships among our staff, with our partners, and with the organizations we support.
• Bravery.We’ll create the space for complex—and sometimes difficult—conversations about the human experience. We’ll learn from our mistakes, improve our ways of working whenever we fall short, and reduce the influence of the biases that we all carry.