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WHO WE ARE

What moves us and why we do this work.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity,  Inclusion,  Justice, and Belonging.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice, and Belonging (DEJIB) are explicit in the values of GOOD TO BE GOOD and foundational to who we are as people—within the organization and outside of it. 

We believe the quality of these values are enhanced and strengthened by working and learning from people with diverse experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, and ideas—with a particular and crucial emphasis on marginalized and equity-deserving people. 

While DEJIB have been fundamental pillars of our mission since GOOD TO BE GOOD’s inception, our commitment has not only been to advance DEJIB within the organization but to amplify DEJIB on a larger scale beyond us. 

 

For us, equity starts with addressing the instructional, systematic, administrative, and system-level inquiries that disproportionately affect women and gender-diverse people. We implement equity by increasing access to our programs, services, and advocacy to the communities most targeted by gender inequality, education modules, and leveraging privilege to unlock interlocking systems of power.  

As a BIPOC-led organization, we are always seeking ways to increase the representation and inclusion of underrepresented minorities and identities, such as those who identify as Black, Indigenous, and Racialized (BIR), in all of our working relationships and space—because we know so well that people are our greatest strength. Having our teams, leadership, and partners reflect the incredible diversity of the people we serve is equally important to us. Because we are part of them! 

As a small yet mighty team, we are constantly evolving the implementation of interventions designed to achieve equity and hold ourselves accountable as we do transformative work. Interventions include sponsorship, amplification, advocacy, community collaboration, and preparing women and gender-diverse people to be in positions that provide experiences for leadership and decision-making roles. 

Inclusion

We are always looking for ways to do things differently (and we do them, too!), especially when it comes to having a greater percentage of BIR and individuals from equity-deserving communities within our employee and Board of Directors population, in particular increasing the representation and decision-making power of Black and Indigenous employees and members within GOOD TO BE GOOD. 

Our future plans include hiring and collaborating with consultants and movement leaders to help us work toward tangible goals; enhancing our talent pipelines to generate a more diverse pool; helping to ensure authentic representation and visibility at all levels of the organization; ensuring Black and Indigenous voices and knowledge are present and honoured as we develop or expand programming; ensuring our efforts support equity-deserving communities as aligned with our mission; and investing in BIR/BIPOC and gender-diverse employees and team members with various skills and cognitive talents.  

We aim to create spaces and environments where inclusion equals diversity plus equity. We do not believe a space can be truly inclusive if the space is inherently racist, sexist, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, and transphobic. Our actions for building inclusive spaces include self-reflection, difficult conversations, assessments, and awareness of how and who we are excluding and how we may be perpetuating discriminatory practices.

As we expand the organization, our goal is to prioritize and conduct a regular cycle of audits to understand if our communications, advocacy, developmental content reflect our DEIB commitments and identify gaps and measures that need to be put into practice and become normative.

Our team will continue to influence the organization’s DEJIB direction and coordinated efforts going forward and hopefully, inspire positive change.

All GOOD TO BE GOOD job, board, and volunteer postings include the following commitment statement and hold ourselves accountable to act according to our values and practices:

Committed to attracting and retaining a diverse staff and Board of Directors, GOOD TO BE GOOD will honour all experiences, perspectives, personalities, and unique identity. Together, our community strives to create and maintain working and learning environments that are inclusive, equitable, and welcoming, and do not reinforce colonial power imbalances, narratives, derogation, assumptions, and attitudes.

Our Guiding Values and Principles

Our core values are steeped in universal principles such as compassion, inclusion, justice, equity, interconnectedness, radical love, responsibility, the protection of human rights, and the teachings of movements, all which steer our long-term commitments and practices. 

Our shared values are central to who we are, what we do, and how we do it. These values are standards which we use as lenses through which all organizational decisions are viewed and embodied. We model a values-based culture by holding these standards within our practice and ways of being.

We believe compassion has the power to connect us to each other and ourselves. Compassion is available to everyone, generates an understanding of our humanity, and can lead to action. 

We believe service is universal and a way to build, play, care, and support one another as equals. We support relationships and experiences that understand the importance of service and its lasting ability to harvest change for everyone.

We believe that radical love is at the core of many justice-seeking movements because of its commitment to the liberation of all beings. Radical love embraces sorrow, joy, grief, grace, forgiveness, active listening, trust, hope—all parts of humanity that fill and sustain our wells.  

In a world that over-values traditional philanthropy and charity models that reinforce the saviour complex, we push for spaces that engage a “solidarity over charity” philosophy and practice that underpins a shared purpose and justice-based approach to social change. We explore ways to destabilize and move away from colonial, top-down white-centric ideas about “what is giving” and its relationship to power and privilege. By strengthening our solidarity and collective care, we diminish the chances of replicating and perpetuating harm of the inequalities we seek to address and build power with, not over, the people we serve. 

We are equity-oriented and committed to centering the experiences of women and gender-diverse people who are often under-represented, under-funded, marginalized, and forced to become vulnerable members of communities. Our commitment to ensuring equitable access is rooted in an intersectional approach to our programs, services, and initiatives. We recognize the inherent worth of lived experiences and practices of struggle, and consciously engage communities with mutual respect to understand perspectives and lived experiences to make progress and realize true equity. 

We acknowledge and are willing to talk about the causes and forms of social injustice and work on challenging and dismantling them. We are committed to understanding and owning our place in the work and fostering accountability with those we work alongside. We hold space as a way to develop confidence in the power of agency as the driving force of responsibility and self-determination. 

We see GOOD TO BE GOOD as part of a more extensive, interlinked web of movements and communities with the common purpose of gender equity. We work with communities to advance our mission and those working in this space. We continuously pursue opportunities to work with our community members, volunteers, and partners to address gender inequities in our community and ignite compassion-led change to ensure that the human rights of all women and gender-diverse people are realized.  

Fostering community is a requisite foundation for transformative justice, meaningful connection, sustainable development, and all that we do as an organization and as people. Alongside diverse communities, we are committed to addressing the cycles of gender inequality and social injustices by learning, supporting, empowering, and being guided by wisdom and grassroots movements working to dismantle inequality-producing structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonialism on local levels and in powerful, loving ways.

We believe that every woman, girl, and gender-diverse person has the right to live a life free from any form of violence, oppression, and discrimination. Our core value is rooted in the fundamental beliefs of feminism which advocates for equal rights such as social, economic, personal, and political equality.