*Registrants will be granted access to course materials and recordings for 60 days after each session.
Our Disability Inclusion Lab provides brave spaces for ENGO staff to share experiences, resources, and best practices to foster workplaces that are welcoming and affirming for people with disabilities and neurodiverse people. This Community of Practice consists of six, two-hour sessions held weekly.
Our Disability Inclusion Lab offers ENGO staff the opportunity to:
The Disability Inclusion Lab is for ENGO staff who are interested in exploring disability inclusion strategies with your colleagues and taking those learnings back to your organization. Whether your organization is at early or advanced stages of disability inclusion, expect to engage in real talk with an intimate group of your peers in a brave, virtual, facilitated space. This isn’t a lecture-style course: this is a Community of Practice where attendees are expected to actively participate, share experiences and resources, and lean into the challenging conversations that foster true change.
Who should attend from your organization? While we believe that all staff have a role to play in disability inclusion, consider sending staff whose job roles related directly to HR, People and Culture, and/or JEDI. You are welcome to send more than one staff member. Previous attendees have found that sending staff from different levels and job roles allows the organization to get the full inclusion picture.
As this program is designed for ENGO staff, it may not provide the most impactful experience for ENGO Board members, ENGO volunteers, or people from grassroots (volunteer-run) ENGOs. People from non-ENGO, non-profit sectors are welcome to join us, keeping in mind that the content has been designed with the ENGO sector in mind.
The Disability Inclusion Lab for organizations that want to learn how to use disability inclusion principles to improve their organization’s disability confidence: becoming comfortable and competent in managing a workforce that includes workers with disabilities and recognizing the significant talents that people with disabilities bring to the workplace. We will also introduce the concept of neurodiversity inclusion. Expect to actively examine your own assumptions, explore strategies specific to policies, processes, and culture, and share experiences and resources with your peers. All participants automatically become part of our burgeoning JEDI Alumni Network, designed to keep up the learning momentum and deepen peer networks.
This initial session is focussed on building trust and safety in the group and getting to know each other. We will take an in-depth look at the concepts of privilege and psychological safety, discuss why it is essential to organizational disability inclusion initiatives, and explore how ableism in the larger world and our workplaces factors in.
Neurodiversity is a relatively new (but increasingly popular) topic in workplace inclusion. Neurodivergence refers to having a style of neurocognitive functioning that is significantly different from what is considered “typical” (i.e. neurotypical) by societal standards. That is, thinking, behaving, or learning differently than these standards. This includes conditions such as ADHD, autism, OCD, dyslexia, and more. We will explore the many presentations of neurodivergence, before discussing questions such as: do disability inclusion principles also apply to neurodivergent people? What common workplace barriers may neurodivergent people face, and what inclusion strategies can we consider?
People with disabilities face a wide variety of barriers in the workplace – and it goes well beyond making your workplace accessible to wheelchair users. In this session we will explore barriers that are transitional (barriers to accessing the work environment) and environmental (barriers found within the work environment), with a focus on strategies to shift attitudinal barriers: differential treatment and discrimination in the work environment.
Organizations often focus their disability inclusion efforts on the recruitment and hiring process. But this is only the start of the employment journey. What happens after the person is hired? We will explore how to tackle key barriers and implement disability inclusion principles at all stages of the employment cycle, including recruitment, hiring, onboarding, retention, promotion and career development, performance management, and job exit.
Mentorship may get all the attention, but it can only do so much on its own. Especially in a sector that currently has very low representation of people with disabilities. We will discuss the differences between allyship, mentorship, and sponsorship, and how to use your voice and privilege to uplift people with disabilities. We will explore how allyship and sponsorship can support mentorship efforts, as well as bring standalone benefits.
In the final session, we bring everything together with a solid work plan designed to set you up for success to take your learnings back to your organization and discuss how to work towards disability confidence. Leave with concrete ideas on how to help your organization recognize the value of individuals with disabilities, create an environment where employees feel comfortable disclosing their disability if they choose, promote awareness to reduce biases, and support leaders to champion inclusion at all levels of the organization.
Anna-Liza Badaloo (she/her) of Anemochory Consulting is a facilitator, un-learner, and inclusive communicator. Viewing JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) through the lens of empathy, her decolonized, intersectional approach helps organizations build capacity by implementing communities of practice, trainings, and empathy-driven frameworks designed to foster organizational justice. By centering equity-deserving communities, she helps organizations understand how colonial structures impact organizational health.
Session 1: Settler Colonialism 101
Introduce ENGO representatives to the fact that colonization is a structure and not an event. Identifies key ways that colonialism moves through individuals and organizations.
Session 2: Positionality
ENGO representatives learn how to articulate their social location within a settler colonial state, and in relation to potential Indigenous partners.
Session 3: Inherent Indigenous Governance 101
Introduce the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues. Examples provided.
Session 4: Building Better Relations
ENGO representatives will road test ways they can implement previous workshop key points to re-imagine partnerships with Indigenous nations.
Cost: $100 (or register 4 staff from the same organization for one stream and get the 5th registration free)
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
Session 1: Diagnosing Settler Colonialism in the Enviro Sector
Participants will be asked to share ways in which they have diagnosed and traced power in social justice movements and/or in the ENGO sector. This workshop will make space for discomfort as part of promoting decolonization.
Session 2: Inherent Indigenous Governance
A mix of advanced and introductory theory, this workshop delves into legal and political pluralism, naming the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues.
Session 3: The Nonprofit Industrial Complex
ENGO participants are introduced to theories and examples describing the Nonprofit Industrial Complex and the “Shadow State.” Purpose is to show how settler colonialism structures civil society.
Session 4: Decolonizing ENGO-First Nation Partnerships
This workshop delves deep into how ENGOs can partner with Indigenous nations beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex while promoting deference to inherent Indigenous political leaders.
Cost: $100 (or register 4 staff from the same organization for one stream and get the 5th registration free)
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
The Indigenous only space will be collaborative in nature but critical in approach. This track is a space for Indigenous folks within the ENGO sector to come together to discuss their experiences and work, with an eye to taking a position on what the sector might need to do in order to promote decolonization. Participants will use the first session to define our goals for the remaining three meetings. Therefore, session topics named here are proposals only.
Session 1: Naming the Cannibal: Settler Colonialism in the ENGO Sector
Session 2: Proposed topic: Reflections on working in the ENGO Sector
Session 3: Proposed topic: Centering Indigenous Thought in the ENGO Sector
Session 4: Proposed topic: Visioning a Decolonial Environmental Sector
Cost: Free
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