Communitech
Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario
The murder of George Floyd and subsequent peak of the Black Lives Matter movement in June, 2020 was a huge catalyst for change at Communitech, where Tech for Good has long been a guiding principle. Complacency was not an option, and we realized we had a lot more work to do, as an organization, when it came to equity, diversity and inclusion.
The May 2021 discovery of a mass grave of 215 children at a residential school site in Kamloops, B.C merely underscored that our effort can never let up as we work towards reconciliation and change.
On July 9, 2020, we assembled an internal Tiger Team with a mandate to actively address diversity, equity and inclusion at our organization. We highlighted our Mission, Objectives and Guiding Principles, made this information available to our team, and made a public promise in our guiding principles on our website.
So far, we’ve tracked fairly well against many of these objectives:
We pledged ourselves to the 50-30 Challenge, an initiative led by the Government of Canada that asks organizations to aim for gender parity (50%) and significant representation (30%) on Canadian boards and senior management teams. Underrepresented groups include racialized persons, people living with disabilities (including invisible and episodic disabilities) and members of the LGBTQ2 community.
We created an Anti-racist and Land Acknowledgement that we include at the beginning of all large meetings, events and programming. We edit this acknowledgment as we continue to learn.
We launched the Fierce Founders Uplift program, which provides $10K in non-matching funds to women and non-binary founders who belong to another underrepresented group.
We have implemented team training sessions on such topics as addressing unconscious bias, Black history in Canada, Indigenous education, and inclusive hiring practices, in addition to employee-led panels, reading groups and internal chat channels.
Despite all of this, it feels like we’ve barely scratched the surface of what we can do for our team, our customers and our community. Striving for diversity, equity and inclusion is a complex and emotional process that brings up difficult questions and discussions, demands humility and introspection, and needs consistent care and attention. That said, this is simply something we must do, for the sake of our people.
The business case for EDI is not enough – we must keep driving change together, because it’s the right thing to do.