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How to use DEI beyond a buzzword
8 months ago
We can speak to "actually USING Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion principles into making decision and policy." We work in nonprofit, and specifically we previously worked in workforce development which means helping people get jobs. We were a grant writer, and we were a training & learning management system administrator.
In BOTH of these roles, we made DEI into actual meat-and-potatoes reality that impacted both the organization we were in, the partners we partnered with, several hundred staff at those partners, and several thousand people those staff serve.
DIVERSITY: Diversity meant that the people we served needed to be reflective of the communities they live in. BEFORE US: Programs were disproportionally serving white men, in that white men were most able to receive the services because they had fewer barriers. WHAT WE DID TO INCREASE DIVERSITY: We got data to show the discrepancy between who-needed-the-most-help, who lived in these regions, and what barriers prevented non-white and non-male people from connecting with these services. Used that data in grant-writing to help tailor programs to better serve more types of people, and used that data in training to provide more specific trainings to reflect the actual issues staff/participants were dealing with: Trauma Informed Care and Compassion Fatigue as two examples.
EQUITY: Equity meant that more assistance was needed to help those with barriers to get access to services. BEFORE US: Some of the barriers to financial assistance were disproportionatly difficult for non-white non-men to access. Such as navigating financial services at colleges, attending online classes (guess who can get devices and has internet access?! Guess who DON'T?!), and being limited to using restrictive financial assistance. WHAT WE DID TO INCREASE EQUITY: Retooled and got more funding for a Student-Centered Design program to help colleges provide better financial assistance guidance to students of color and non-English speaking students. Convinced device lending programs to stop lending and just GIVE devices to participants, so they don't have to worry about giving stuff back and also not ruin their relationship with the nonprofit because of having to harass participants to give back laptops and wifi that they desperately fucking need. And convinced grant funders to stop giving a fuck about how stipends were spent - people generally know how best to spend money to reduce their own barriers, they don't need to be limited to just this one grocery store chain and just this one gas station - and then came back and showed them that by letting non-white non-men people spend stipends unrestricted, they reduce their own barriers and are able to persist through programs at rates equitable to white men. (It also had the additional benefit of alleviating nonprofit staff from wasting time and resources chasing down devices and harassing participants, which was ruining relationships by making staff be perceived as 'hall monitors' and enforcers, rather than trusted advisors and assistance providers).
INCLUSION: Inclusion meant to us to incorporate the perspectives and voices of EVERY stakeholder, especially those NOT at the discussion table. BEFORE US: Program staff and participants were RARELY solicited for input or feedback on program design. Conversations would be held high level between leadership and program directors and the grant funders - none of whom usually had much lived experienced in needing to use or provide assistance. WHAT WE DID TO INCREASE INCLUSION: Set up regular, frequent surveys and questions to both program staff implementing programs and for participants in programs, and hosted regular interviews and open office hours to actually fucking talk to and listen program staff about what was actually happening and their ideas on how to do better. Fed that data into the program design, and used that data to justify better training topics. The feedback we got all the time was "Nobody ever asked me before... but I deal with dozens of people who are having difficulty with this issue right now and this one change would really go a long way..." EXAMPLE: Digital Literacy during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Guess who don't know how to use computers, but are now no longer able to go in-person to the closed brick-and-mortar job centers? Poor non-white non-men. Guess who get asked to teach people internet and computer basics constantly? People serving poor non-white non-men. So we designed curriculum to teach these staff not only the best way to help give that knowledge, but also build awareness of the existing programs out there like North Star Digital Literacy Assessment and all these local/regional device giving organizations such as Goodwill that included Digital Literacy classes as part of their device GIVING programs (which we had helped change from device LENDING earlier :D ).
There was one specific class we took that gave us the language, understanding, and tools needed to do any of this: An online class through Coursera, from Rice University: https://www.coursera.org/learn/defi.....-organizations
In BOTH of these roles, we made DEI into actual meat-and-potatoes reality that impacted both the organization we were in, the partners we partnered with, several hundred staff at those partners, and several thousand people those staff serve.
DIVERSITY: Diversity meant that the people we served needed to be reflective of the communities they live in. BEFORE US: Programs were disproportionally serving white men, in that white men were most able to receive the services because they had fewer barriers. WHAT WE DID TO INCREASE DIVERSITY: We got data to show the discrepancy between who-needed-the-most-help, who lived in these regions, and what barriers prevented non-white and non-male people from connecting with these services. Used that data in grant-writing to help tailor programs to better serve more types of people, and used that data in training to provide more specific trainings to reflect the actual issues staff/participants were dealing with: Trauma Informed Care and Compassion Fatigue as two examples.
EQUITY: Equity meant that more assistance was needed to help those with barriers to get access to services. BEFORE US: Some of the barriers to financial assistance were disproportionatly difficult for non-white non-men to access. Such as navigating financial services at colleges, attending online classes (guess who can get devices and has internet access?! Guess who DON'T?!), and being limited to using restrictive financial assistance. WHAT WE DID TO INCREASE EQUITY: Retooled and got more funding for a Student-Centered Design program to help colleges provide better financial assistance guidance to students of color and non-English speaking students. Convinced device lending programs to stop lending and just GIVE devices to participants, so they don't have to worry about giving stuff back and also not ruin their relationship with the nonprofit because of having to harass participants to give back laptops and wifi that they desperately fucking need. And convinced grant funders to stop giving a fuck about how stipends were spent - people generally know how best to spend money to reduce their own barriers, they don't need to be limited to just this one grocery store chain and just this one gas station - and then came back and showed them that by letting non-white non-men people spend stipends unrestricted, they reduce their own barriers and are able to persist through programs at rates equitable to white men. (It also had the additional benefit of alleviating nonprofit staff from wasting time and resources chasing down devices and harassing participants, which was ruining relationships by making staff be perceived as 'hall monitors' and enforcers, rather than trusted advisors and assistance providers).
INCLUSION: Inclusion meant to us to incorporate the perspectives and voices of EVERY stakeholder, especially those NOT at the discussion table. BEFORE US: Program staff and participants were RARELY solicited for input or feedback on program design. Conversations would be held high level between leadership and program directors and the grant funders - none of whom usually had much lived experienced in needing to use or provide assistance. WHAT WE DID TO INCREASE INCLUSION: Set up regular, frequent surveys and questions to both program staff implementing programs and for participants in programs, and hosted regular interviews and open office hours to actually fucking talk to and listen program staff about what was actually happening and their ideas on how to do better. Fed that data into the program design, and used that data to justify better training topics. The feedback we got all the time was "Nobody ever asked me before... but I deal with dozens of people who are having difficulty with this issue right now and this one change would really go a long way..." EXAMPLE: Digital Literacy during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Guess who don't know how to use computers, but are now no longer able to go in-person to the closed brick-and-mortar job centers? Poor non-white non-men. Guess who get asked to teach people internet and computer basics constantly? People serving poor non-white non-men. So we designed curriculum to teach these staff not only the best way to help give that knowledge, but also build awareness of the existing programs out there like North Star Digital Literacy Assessment and all these local/regional device giving organizations such as Goodwill that included Digital Literacy classes as part of their device GIVING programs (which we had helped change from device LENDING earlier :D ).
There was one specific class we took that gave us the language, understanding, and tools needed to do any of this: An online class through Coursera, from Rice University: https://www.coursera.org/learn/defi.....-organizations
There is a phrase I keep coming back to, "No man is an Island" And I feel like this is more true now more than ever, those who have been given less opportunities can not simply WORK themselves out of poverty, A hand is needed. The more we work towards Equity and representation, the more our world will improve. For everyone.