Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging & Access (DEIBA)
VDC’s DEIBA Mission
VDC prioritizes policies, practices, values and dynamics that nurture and sustain DEIBA by advancing the rigorous self-reflection and education of our professional members.
VDC’s DEIBA Vision
VDC members honor, celebrate and advocate for DEIBA within and beyond our organization. We extend beyond our familiar comfort zones to represent and respect the broad richness of our diverse communities, partners, professionals and clients.
Diversity & VDC’s Bylaws, XIV A:
“A. Diversity Committee
As an organization committed to social justice, VDC affirms a duty to embody the social justice we wish to see in the social systems with which we are inextricably interrelated. We honor diversity, celebrate human dignity, and work to secure the same. As a community of life-long learners, we stretch beyond our familiar purviews to embrace differences with forbearance, compassion and grace.
With compassion and cultural humility for ourselves and others, VDC members shall honor an unqualified commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging and Access (DEIBA), including the principles of mutual respect and social justice that this commitment implies. VDC’s members work to learn the skills needed to effectively raise concerns and remediate the adverse, detrimental, or injurious effects of our biased, inequitable and/or exclusive attitudes and behaviors on others, including those within and beyond VDC. We hold ourselves responsible for offering or learning to offer effective means of repair for any adverse impacts when possible, desirable and/or acceptable to recipients.
Given our unqualified commitment to the principles of DEIBA, a Diversity Committee shall be a perpetual Committee of the VDC Board. VDC furthers and upholds this unqualified commitment by, for example, working to ensure our members, staff, community partners, volunteers and populations served are diverse and reflect the members and interests of our broader communities.
The Diversity Committee’s guidance and recommendations are proactively sought whenever setting policy, hiring, making appointments, procuring goods and services, selecting vendors, providing programs, selecting trainers, marketing, soliciting referrals, soliciting memberships and donations, providing written materials, and all other actions that affect VDC’s impact on and its collaborations with the broader community. To help us keep in mind our commitment to DEIBA principles, one member of each Board Committee shall be selected by that committee based on diversity-related interest, experience and/or training to serve and liaison with the Diversity Committee.
In addition, the Diversity Committee will proactively support VDC’s committees’ DEIBA commitments, determine which DEIBA materials to include on VDC’s Honoring Diversity Webpage, and will develop educational materials and resources for member groups including but not limited to, for example:
- Definitions
- Identifying and distinguishing organizational values, dynamics and approaches that foster social justice, inclusion, belonging and access,
- Guidelines for managing in-house, diversity-related concerns (with input from the Membership Committee),
- A VDC Honoring Diversity Statement, which may include VDC bylaws pertaining to the Diversity Committee, VDC’s DEIBA Mission and Vision, Approach and Goals,
- DEIBA Learning Library of Resources for Professionals and/or the Community,
- Routinely updated Modest Means Family Law Resources for VDC program participants who may not have access to our services,
- A Practice Group Effectiveness Assessment Tool that allows VDC members to consider the quality and nature of their interpersonal relationships and participation, including but not limited to DEIBA-related themes, and
- Accountability via the transparent sharing of DEIBA operationally-defined successes and challenges, including the tracking methods used to identify and assess these.
