Applying an equity lens to all our work
Equity refers to fairness and justice within various contexts, ensuring that individuals or groups are provided with the resources and opportunities needed to achieve equitable outcomes.
Equity means attending to and addressing the hidden wounds of racial trauma that include: internalized devaluation, assaulted sense of self, and internalized voicelessness.
The Social Policy Institute is committed to centering new ways of knowing, planning and strategizing through an equity lens, and to transforming mindsets and behaviors in order to practice and live out equity in words and actions.
“Racial oppression is a traumatic form of interpersonal violence which can lacerate the spirit, scar the soul, and puncture the psyche.”
Dr. Kenneth Hardy
The work we do revolves around:
- Making decisions with families who most impacted by the situation and outcome
- Valuing all perspectives and experiences equitably
- Seeing marginalized people and communities as creative and capable
- Becoming compassionate systems that see and respond to the dimensions of difference
- Embedding racial justice and families in everyday practice
- Slowing down to listen, connect and learn from the most excluded voices
In 2019, SPI developed a toolkit that aims to center equity in organizations’ daily work and encourage data literacy by demonstrating how we all play a role in creating an equitable culture of evaluation.
The “JLB” Learning Series was designed with the growing awareness of the evolving needs of families and communities in mind. It stands for Justice, Liberty, and Belonging and as such incorporates traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) topics and skills, including cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity, but goes even further.
- “Justice” speaks to fair, impartial, reasonable treatment for everyone along with an effort to remediate situations where that has not occurred. It points to everyone deserving equal economic, political, and social rights and opportunities.
- “Liberty” invites a focus on gaining freedom from the impact of trauma, racism, and inequity; it also reciprocally points to accountability with freedom from conscious and unconscious actions that have harmed others and oneself.
- “Belonging” is both a sense of place and of identity in family, in communities, within organizations, and as one who is served and supported. It is the full expression of basic human dignity in the context of relationship.
Deeply interconnected, a just society promotes liberty and belonging by ensuring that all individuals are treated fairly.
Are you interested in partnering with us?
Contact SPI Director, Lori Clarke | lsclarke@sdsu.edu
