TNM’s DEI Commitments
It’s Pride Month and next week is Juneteenth! These celebrations are reminders of the joy and resiliency in communities historically repressed and marginalized. The Neighboring Movement team has been hard at work defining our role and commitments to creating a more equitable and just world.
First, we created a DEI Statement that helps us guide our work and our culture as a team.
Mission Statement: The Neighboring Movement nurtures authentic, gifts-focused connections to foster neighbor-centered leadership.
DEI Statement: We work for justice for all neighbors across the intersections of age, race, ethnicity, family configuration, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, immigration status, difference of ability, neurodiversity, religious tradition, body shape and size, economic circumstances, housing status, and more. The expression of our work will be a liberating and justice-seeking effort of joy, relationship, and abundance for all people. The Neighboring Movement was originally founded within the Christian tradition and now works with those of religious, non-religious, and nominally religious backgrounds.
Having a statement is a great start, but we recognize it does nothing if it is not backed up with action. Here are some of the commitments we are making to make this statement a reality in our work.
Forming Our Team: As part of our hiring practices we are intentionally seeking out diverse networks that widen our range of candidates. This includes working to build connections and relationships even when we are not hiring.
Examples:
Advertising Job Openings with NAACP, Young Hispanic Leaders of Wichita, LGBTQ+ Foundation of KS, and others.
Forming interview teams that have a mixed representation
The Neighboring Movement Board has a DEI Committee that assists in recruiting staff and recommending board members
Learning and Education: The Neighboring Movement will provide training in bias, diversity, equity, and inclusion for all staff members on a regular basis (at least annually). We will incorporate training in equity and bias for all of our program participants.
Examples:
Staff participated in bias training with Inclusive Growth Strategies of Wichita
Staff participated in training on Queer Inclusion with the LGBTQ+ Foundation of Kansas
Partnered with NETworX to provide bias and inclusion training for all program participants
Content Creation: When The Neighboring Movement creates new content it will seek to include voices that are traditionally marginalized and review content with a DEI Committee on our Board of Directors to review content for cultural sensitivity.
Examples:
Faith based curriculum, The Good Neighbor Experiment, is being translated into Spanish and being reviewed by DEI Committee
Contracting with NETworX to develop integrated content for all programming
Making content available in a variety of formats suitable to many learning styles
Commitment to Equity: The Neighboring Movement recognizes that access is not universal for all communities and deliberately seeks to remove barriers for communities that traditionally have limited access.
Examples:
Hires Community Animators as contract workers to make employment available for mix-status applicants
Reserves spots within programming capacity for groups traditionally marginalized
Seeks to engage voters who are traditionally ignored by political campaigns using a partnership with Voter-to-Voter
These are some of the many ways we are using our work to further the cause of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
We are still learning and are happy to hear your feedback! In what ways do you want to make the work of neighboring more inclusive?
