Equity & Inclusion at Morrison

The EAC’s Practical Vision is what the Council would like to see in place at Morrison as a result of its actions. In order to accomplish this objective, the EAC created Strategic Directions that are innovative, substantial actions that will deal with any underlying contradictions and move us towards our vision.

All Morrison service providers will be expected to “unlearn biases” and expand their skills in cultural responsiveness. This strategic direction is collaborating with HR to support the development and implementation of a training and coaching program which reinforces the importance of critical self-learning for supervisors and managers. In 2022, Reflective Consultation and Race Equity for Supervisors and Managers was launched as a six-session pilot program. The goal this year is to expand this offering to a total of 24 sessions. Strategic Direction I will support the implementation and evaluation of this effort.

We identified the main languages spoken in areas we are currently serving and translated our website into the most commonly spoken languages identified. We hope this provides a more equitable experience for our clients whose native language is not English. We also launched our Racial History series, a learning platform that we create and share with our agency. This helps us unlearn whitewashed history and learn about historical events and individuals from communities of color to truly understand how our country was shaped. This learning felt important to us to prioritize as we work towards our race-first equity initiative.

Strategic Direction 3 is tasked with institutionalizing antiracist staff development in several ways. These include coordinating with the agency’s human resources department to support hiring practices that align with community priorities and ensure that there are internal agency policies that address issues of discrimination, micro-aggressions, and patterns of exclusion/inclusion. SD3 also works with organizational leadership to establish and appropriately fund membership in the agency’s Community Advisory Board, and to include work being done to support antiracist efforts in annual reports.

The Equity Advisory Council’s Strategic Directions #4 and #5 collaborate around the exciting work of measuring the concrete characteristics of our agency that bring us closer to our whole community (#4), as well as creating the infrastructure for ongoing feedback, dialogue, and meaningful connection between clients, partners, and staff (#5).

We have been tasked with creating the infrastructure for ongoing feedback, dialogue, and meaningful connection between clients, partners, and staff: a Community Advisory Board. Over the past year, we have facilitated six large dialogues for all Morrison staff to explore this idea with us and identify what we want this structure to look like. To provide equitable access to this discussion and decision making, we have also sent many emails to team leaders to request feedback and have joined team meetings to support dissemination of information and the gathering of more perspectives.

The Equity, Inclusion & Sanctuary Department (EI&S) shall be the equity, Inclusion, and antiracism all-staff training resource, and provide advice, expertise and assistance to the Equity Advisory Council or “EAC,” and Morrison department/program directors, vice-presidents and executive leadership.

“White Fragility I & II” is Morrison’s current training model. Soon, the EI&S Department will launch “Equity & Inclusion at Morrison: Cultivating an Anti-Racist Organization” as the foundational equity & inclusion onboarding for new staff and others. This learning will offer a progressive overview with definitions of: racial history and racism as a structure; cultural differences; and complexities including the impact of dominant culture, coded communication (i.e. microaggressions, implicit bias, etc.) and liberation strategies. This learning will occur as soon as feasible after the employee’s 90-day anniversary date.

These trainings are supplemented by ongoing “Reflective Consultation about Racism” which explore in depth a topic or circumstance introduced during the “Equity & Inclusion at Morrison” or “White Fragility I & II” training.

Link to full description of curriculum