Tuesday is the National Day of Racial Healing, and Rochester city officials say they've made progress in their commitment to improving racial equality.
For the last year, they have been getting "REAL".
"REAL" is the acronym for "Race, Equity and Leadership," an initiative designed to address structural racism and implicit bias in city government.
"It started with us. It ends with us as well," said Luticha Doucette, who leads Rochester's "Real" core team.
The mission is to focus on getting nearly 400 city employees to engage in discussions about race.
"How do you move through conflict? How do you relate to each other differently…and that's when we started to see people open up, and being vulnerable, and sharing in a different way and people now saying, 'now I get it,'" she said.
As 2020 kicks off into full gear, city officials want to take the initiative beyond Rochester City Hall.
Businesses like DG&M Insurance are supportive of the move.
"We make sure that employees have an understanding of what structural racism is and implicit, and what that means and how it impacts our customers because not everyone comes from the same background," said Dale Trott of DG&M.
For the city of Rochester, it’s about providing a blueprint to ensure racial equity within any organization.
"If we spending most of our time here in our work place let's make it the best work place we can be,” Doucette said. “And therefore it impacts our citizen: how we relate to them, how we actually deal with them, (and) how will we serve our citizens in a better way."