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EI&D Working Group: Capacity, Budget, Independence

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EI&D Working Group: Capacity, Budget, Independence

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We need to be responsive, if someone is stepping forward from their role to take on parts of this work, there needs to be a redistribution of their workload.

Possible national grant money coming forward to all OB schools to support this work. Not sure of the timing of this, Poppy sees this as seed money. We as an organization have to demonstrate the value of this by creating a budget and positions to address this.

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How do people feel about our culture being labeled as "cisgender, largely male"? 

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How do people feel about our culture being labeled as "cisgender, largely male"? 

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Some folks felt that this quote does not resonate. Some folks feel that this speaks to the larger context of Outward Bound and the outdoor industry. Quotes from the chat:

"Is it a question about operation or about optics? I think VOBS may be largely male (I don’t have the employee roster in front of me) but it benefits from influential & effective female - identifying people in leadership"

"I also thought about the voices that completed the survey or participated in the focus groups - that may be their perspective."

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We are very much problem-solvers. We fix things and create solutions, but we need to get better at completing the circle of feedback. How did the solution work for people? How did we go about the process? We are compassionate, caring people and we get busy and when we have space to take a breath, folks have moved to other spaces because of seasons. How do we integrate this into our everyday behaviors?

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How do we know when we've been successful? 

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How do we know when we've been successful? 

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How are we going to make sure that people who do want to attend trainings can attend given workload/scheduling? How do we ensure that EI&D working group members have the time and capacity to be a part of the group given their current workload?  

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How are we going to make sure that people who do want to attend trainings can attend given workload/scheduling? How do we ensure that EI&D working group members have the time and capacity to be a part of the group given their current workload?  

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If "service" better describes what we're doing then I'm all for changing it. But if we're changing our values because "service" is white supremacist because of some criteria then I'm not okay with that.

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When I'm done with course, I feel exhausted and want to step out of OB and go back to my world outside of OB. Thinking about the connection between the culture of overwork and the sense of duty to take on the short term recommendations. The challenge of capacity -- does it mean days of work? Does it mean adding days of personal reflection/building community in my time off?

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Feeling the gravity and weight and responsibility of getting right. Feels like there is a ton riding on the momentum of the next 6-9 months.

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Excited to get support to rethink how we use inclusive language when talking to students and parents. What are things that I/we are saying that are coded language? Thinking about "service" too as a place where language can become more inclusive.

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Hoping that the process of forming the EI&D working group can give us insights into how we can more broadly integrate sustainability into other projects/committees/etc. Hoping it plants a seed for our systems and structures in a really big way.

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How do we create internal capacity to facilitate content and drive our continuous learning? How does that connect to the EI&D Working group? How do we stay mindful of the traps of that might come up in that process? (i.e. siloing EI&D work into a few roles/people as opposed to EI&D work as everyone's responsibility)

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How do we create internal capacity to facilitate content and drive our continuous learning? How does that connect to the EI&D Working group? How do we stay mindful of the traps of that might come up in that process? (i.e. siloing EI&D work into a few roles/people as opposed to EI&D work as everyone's responsibility)

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Seeing the opportunity to learn about things we didn't know. Looking forward to how trainings might create opportunities for people to identify how they might want to advance their own learnings.

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The emphasis on "service above self" as a way of acting is valued at VOBS...there's an award for it. Realizing that it isn't an inclusive practice to ask people to serve others possibly to their own deficit. And this is highly valued and ties to white dominant culture. Feeling that shifting away from "service" might feel hard because we're so entrenched in white dominant culture.

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Recognizing that service as a concept and value stems from pre-VOBS, foundational to OB in its inception. Seeing this as an opportunity to update our values to align with what we do given our current cultural and historical context. Both resonates and feels challenging.

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Needing guidance around what comes next. 

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Needing guidance around what comes next. 

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Excited to build personal skills, but not having the personal process or next steps in place feels hard. We need a process to take our current work around diversity to the next level of equity. I don't have the expertise or next steps.

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Need to balance training plan with capacity. 

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Need to balance training plan with capacity. 

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Can you clarify the "service" piece? It's a core pillar of Outward Bound and it's being connected to white supremacy culture. Are you asking for us to change our value and what we do? 

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Can you clarify the "service" piece? It's a core pillar of Outward Bound and it's being connected to white supremacy culture. Are you asking for us to change our value and what we do? 

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How does hiring & recruitment reify white dominant culture? 

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How does hiring & recruitment reify white dominant culture? 

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Would have liked more quotes from colleagues and co-workers to better connect with the report.

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Feels challenging to have kind of "general" next steps. For example, after reading this report, what is my next step?

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White folks should not "fix" things for communities of Color. Communities of Color have a responsibility to fix things themselves too.

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VOBS has not been "predominantly male". 

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VOBS has not been "predominantly male". 

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Historically, VOBS has been very welcoming to women on staff and in leadership positions.

(Another participant shared that the outdoor industry is steeped in "masculine"/ "machismo" energy so we

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Having felt and talked about the inequity at OB, seeing all the little details written out felt really exciting.

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All of our systems are geared towards positioning whiteness as dominant. How do we take things from an unconscious level to conscious level?

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Excited to see the EI&D Working Group take shape!

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Trainings seem like a lot in a short amount of time. 

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Trainings seem like a lot in a short amount of time. 

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My only hesitation in the document came when reading Creating a Brave Space includes "interrupting microaggressions" but I am excited for the training and seeing how that looks. Some of the trainings seem like a lot in a short amount of time (Shifting Organizational Culture in particular seems ambitious).

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How do I as a white person fit into a more racially diverse VOBS?

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How do I as a white person fit into a more racially diverse VOBS?

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Justice Outside will largely be facilitating though we are in the process of evaluating our training model and content to better fit VOBS

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How do these recommendations compare to recommendations for other outdoor organizations? 

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How do these recommendations compare to recommendations for other outdoor organizations? 

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Shivani's response: Every set of recommendations we develop is really dependent on an organization's specific context. When developing recommendations, we take into account a few things: what are the strengths and assets within an organization? What are staff and board prepared to do? What are the opportunities for growth?

That being said, these recommendations generally align with what we see as necessary at other organizations in similar mindsets/positions as VOBS. In reviewing survey responses and hearing folks talk in focus groups, it became very clear that there is a deep desire to do this work and do it well. That clarity really allowed us to lean into providing a more expansive list of recommendations because we knew folks would be receptive.

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How do we follow through on short term recommendations without falling into the trap of overwork/self sacrifice? How do we ensure that people have the appropriate time to do the work? How do we ensure the same people are signing up to do the work? How do we ensure that folks in the EI&D working group have the appropriate power without automatically defaulting to the most powerful people in the org sitting on the working group?

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Broadening our view of equity & inclusion. 

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Broadening our view of equity & inclusion. 

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We focus on students a lot and we do a lot of work with students well, excited to see us taking a broader view and thinking about internal culture.

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Sometimes it feels like we are an insular community, the use of outside perspective for this work feels really exciting. Wondering about how this kind of process might benefit us in other streams of work.

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Tension between the day to day and this work

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Tension between the day to day and this work

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How do we move through the day to day and be doing this work, especially in a busy season?

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Excited that we're in this preparing and action stage. Recognizing that as we get into that, we might flow in between and need to take steps back, but that feels exciting.

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Excited to get tools and processes to give us forward movement to be where we want to be. Need to lean into not being impatient. I feel like it will be an uncomfortable process, but the fact that we're going to be more intentional about the tools and processes we use to welcome and work with all students feels exciting.

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If we intentionally move through these practices in the next six months, we will be embracing and functioning in ways that are beneficial to the organization that goes beyond what we can imagine in this moment.

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Individually and as an organization.

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The processes we'll be building and the groundwork we'll be laying. 

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The processes we'll be building and the groundwork we'll be laying. 

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Starting with racial equity will help us address inequities in other realms of identity.

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It is helpful to frame, frame and reframe trainings!!! And frame and reframe again. Staff want to know the intention behind things and understand how to apply it to their work at VOBS. One helpful framing is the 70-20-10 learning model. That there is important learning to be done in the 20% when they talk about the training afterwards, and 70% of the learning is in their work with students and staff.

Also very important to make space 24-48 hours after training session to process with staff, optional, even if just for an hour.

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How will trainings be implemented with new staff? 

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How will trainings be implemented with new staff? 

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I'm super curious to learn about the trainings that they mentioned and how those will be implemented with new staff and all the different departments. We're going forward with the materials that were provided at the NTC in 2019. A lot of that seemed big and important when VOBS Homeplace did all the training in 2019 (exploring equity, inclusion & cultural relevancy, power & privilege, and looking at the historical timeline as it relates to systems of oppression and discrimination) and now when we have it crammed into a 5 hour session instead of spaced out over travel and smaller sessions throughout a training cycle, people have stronger feelings and don't understand the context as well.

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More training as a facilitate of EID sessions. 

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More training as a facilitate of EID sessions. 

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I would love more training as a facilitator of EID sessions.

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Culture of overwork findings resonates. 

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Culture of overwork findings resonates. 

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I'm really excited about this work and I care deeply about it, but I feel like there are challenges to diving deeply into it because there are a lot of things going and it's a super busy time. Feeling a bit of guilt around this because I want to prioritize this work.

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Seeing a cast of characters move through the internship program. The program works well for a certain type of person who is passionate about OB, but not for everyone. There's great training but how it's set up isn't conducive to diversity. How do we create other pipelines or set the program up to invite staff from different backgrounds into VOBS?

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We have a responsibility to foster inclusivity in our environment and how do we influence the external factors in the outdoor industry which is very white dominated?

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Previous experience at a white led nonprofit demonstrated that intentionality in moving with values felt like it made change possible.

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Patience and not jumping directly into problem solving. 

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Patience and not jumping directly into problem solving. 

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Feeling the desire to sink into recommendations (aka action steps). Brings up challenge around taking the time to "process" the report.