{"id":79126,"date":"2022-06-22T12:21:23","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T16:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=79126"},"modified":"2022-06-22T16:46:09","modified_gmt":"2022-06-22T20:46:09","slug":"equity-diversity-and-inclusion-workshops-a-community-learning-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2022\/06\/equity-diversity-and-inclusion-workshops-a-community-learning-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Equity, diversity and inclusion workshops a community learning experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

This spring, Brock University and United Way Niagara offered a workshop series on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) for community organizations<\/a> with a goal of creating space for learning, unlearning and building connections.<\/p>\n

Brock\u2019s Social Justice Research Institute (SJRI) and Office of Community Relations teamed up with Tamara Coleman-Lawrie, Director of Strategic Impact at United Way Niagara, to host three sessions over three months focusing on EDI challenges<\/a>, best practices<\/a> and next steps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More than 140 participants attended each of the three virtual workshops.<\/p>\n

The enthusiastic uptake of the series reflected a need that was first identified by Coleman-Lawrie, who found she was receiving a high volume of requests for EDI resources from large and small organizations across the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pandemic really brought to light the inequities that communities are faced with, and we began hearing how executive directors, organizations and senior staff wanted to know more about EDI best practices,\u201d says Coleman-Lawrie. \u201cWe were seeing a plethora of needs from agencies working to develop policies, so we wanted to be able to provide support in a collective format so that anyone who wanted to participate could walk away with what they needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julie Gregory, Project Facilitator for SJRI, says the workshops\u2019 high attendance and engagement speak to the strong level of community interest in enacting EDI.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were very excited to come together to talk about EDI and decide how to take action,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd the feedback that we\u2019ve gotten shows that people want more of these opportunities to connect with community \u2014 to share resources and share their knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vanessa Cheng, Brock\u2019s Manager of Community Relations, heard similar feedback from participants.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter each and every one of these workshops, community partners shared with me that they were inspired by the presenters and other participants, that they had reached out and connected with others to have offline conversations, to learn from each other and operationalize things that were discussed during the workshops,\u201d says Cheng.<\/p>\n

Gregory also notes the workshop series highlighted many ways that participants can carry their learning forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the main things that came out of the third session in particular was the importance of continually checking in to see how efforts are progressing,\u201d she says. \u201cThe concepts around EDI aren\u2019t static, so it\u2019s important to keep checking in to see if there are new or different resources that are needed, or if an approach needs to change over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coleman-Lawrie says the series also helped remind people of the role of accessibility in EDI.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the research she shared as a presenter, Dr. Liette Vasseur used the acronym IDEA \u2014 inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility,\u201d says Coleman-Lawrie. \u201cMy biggest takeaway for the EDI work that we\u2019re doing in our own organization is not forgetting that accessibility piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

SJRI Director Rebecca Raby says that even though the workshop series was a bit of a departure for the Research Institute, the importance of EDI and community to the SJRI mandate meant they were happy to get involved \u2014 and the results were mutually beneficial.<\/p>\n

\u201cSJRI has been working on developing and deepening our community connections through research and knowledge mobilization,\u201d she says. \u201cThis knowledge- and problem-sharing event helped build research connections between our faculty affiliates and community organizations, including United Way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any workshop participants who have not yet had the chance to provide feedback are invited to complete this survey<\/a>. For those who were unable to participate in the workshop series, recordings are available to view on the SJRI recent events page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This spring, Brock University and United Way Niagara offered a workshop series on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) for community organizations with a goal of creating space for learning, unlearning and building connections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":79127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9794,7,1,4,38],"tags":[703,11712,1532,1083,11711,7028,11710],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79129,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79126\/revisions\/79129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}