Dear friends of CityHive,
We’re sending you lots of cozy vibes with the start of fall and these shorter, rainier days! Maybe you’re like me and holding onto the energy of summer (while getting a bit drenched outside in the rain!), or maybe you’re leaning in and cozying up to fall. For me this season, taking hold in September, will forever feel like the start of the year, and has me extra reflective and pushing to slooooooow down.
The reflection that we wanted to share with you this month is an update on the commitments we’ve made to our community and to ourselves to hold ourselves accountable to centering justice, equity, decolonization, diversity & inclusion (JEDDI) in everything that we do. We wanted to take a moment to share a snippet of our learnings and progress, and invite you into some of the questions that we’re exploring. So much of this work is internal and so deeply embedded in everything that we do but it is also deeply personal and woven into each staff and board member’s own positionality and learning edges. This work spans everything – our mission, internal team culture, HR practices, every aspect of our programs, our partnerships, how we evaluate, and everything in between. We also know that it’s important to share with our community not only so you can hear some of the changes and work we’re undergoing, but also to acknowledge your role in shaping our direction and being a part of our journey as an organization.
Some of the questions that we’re exploring and asking ourselves (and collaborators) are:
- How do we actively deliver ‘civics’ education with a strong lens of decolonization, when ‘civics’ inherently centres on colonial governments?
- How do we de-centre whiteness in our ways of doing and as an organization in a sector built on white supremacy?
- How do we embed more time and capacity into program delivery to allow for a slower pace that gives more space for slow, intentional relationship and partnership building?
- What can we hold our partners accountable to?
- How do we lean away from the pressure to quantify our evaluations and impact?
A few of the ways that we’ve put our commitments in action:
- Internal systems and processes: As a young organization, we’ve had the opportunity to build a lot of our internal “ways of doing” from scratch and do that in a way that feels aligned with our values. Sometimes this feels urgent, and even when it does, we’ve been trying to do this slowly instead of doing things the way they’ve traditionally been done because “that’s the way they’re done”. In the last year, that includes collaboratively building out HR policies, HR manual and hiring processes that embed our JEDDI values.
- Team learning: So much of embedding JEDDI into the DNA of our organization stems from each individual in our organization. Each team member has developed individual JEDDI learning goals according to their own knowledge gaps and positionalities, and we have undergone several individual and team trainings (with great organizations and trainers we’d recommend including Bakau Consulting, Subtext Consulting, M̓i tel’nexw Leadership Society, Nahanee Creative & Decolonizing Practices).These trainings included sessions on Unpacking White Supremacy, Unlearning Anti-Blackness, Anti-Oppression 101, Decolonization, Learning Meaningful Land Acknowledgements and more. These sessions in particular were a starting point to holding space for conversations as a team to identify our gaps, challenges, opportunities and learning edges off of which we based off many of our actions and commitments. Moreover, we aim to create a culture where learning is encouraged and ongoing and where we support each other to acknowledge and fill our learning gaps. Each of our own individual journeys in learning what justice, equity and decolonization look like in our own lives is deeply personal and ongoing, and also requires space as a team to discuss.
- Impact measurement and strategic clarity: At the start of this year, we brought on an Impact Measurement Researcher to help us achieve a better understanding of the impact of our programs, who our programs are and aren’t reaching, and where we can be doing better. This process led us into a Strategic Clarity process where we have been sifting through what we’ve learned, testing our assumptions with our community (thanks to all those who filled out a survey or joined a focus group!), and creating a new organizational Theory of Change (more to come later this fall!).
- Program recruitment and application processes: Recognizing that our program application processes can be a big barrier to being a part of the program, we’ve been reviewing how we require youth to apply to be part of our programs. Some of the actions we’ve undertaken have been recruiting through a greater network of youth-serving agencies and organizations, creating application alternatives (i.e. submitting a video application) and modifying the extent of questions we ask. We’re still learning and will be adapting both our application processes and recruitment processes.
- Accessibility mechanisms within programs: While our programs have always been free of charge and mostly included honorariums, we’ve increased our program budget allocations to anything that can make them more accessible, including providing technology access (ie laptops), live captioning, childcare, transit stipends and other mechanisms.
- Internal accountability: Based on our organizational gaps and opportunities, we created an internal living dashboard to capture our current gaps/challenges and outline short, medium and long term actions to advance our JEDDI values. So much of this work — when done well — can be challenging to measure, but we know that to make progress we need to take stock of where we’ve started. This dashboard serves as our ‘living’ (ie constantly changing) plan to take action and to hold ourselves accountable to this work.
A few of the actions that are in progress:
- Partnerships: While CityHive works with amazing partners, we’re committing to extending and deepening our partnerships with youth-serving agencies and organizations to build capacity for co-designing and co-delivering programs. Our hope is to reach a greater range of youth who face systemic barriers to civic participation and youth who haven’t been engaged in our programs, and to do so on their terms.
- New programs: We’re in the midst of scheming, planning and supporting pilots for new programs that are designed by and for BIPOC youth.
- Equity curriculum in civic education and in our programs: Building on the great work of our Equity in Civic Education Researcher and progress in our civic education programs, we’re working on how we can make sure that each youth who participates in our programs walks away with a greater understanding of equity, justice and decolonization.
We will continue to share updates and reflections and invite you along as a member of our community. Thanks for reading and joining us on this journey. And keep reading below for some upcoming programs, events and opportunities we have for you!
Veronika
For the CityHive Staff Team + Board