DEIB at RisingOaks

At RisingOaks Early Learning, we uphold and maintain a community where families, children, educators and staff feel safe, respected, empowered, and a sense of belonging. With this sense of belonging, everyone can learn, grow, challenge themselves, and bring their perspective.

We respect the many different perspectives and lived experiences within our community. RisingOaks commits to being accountable to our community through reflective practice. Collectively, we strive to continuously challenge the status quo and enhance inclusivity and allyship within our community.

DEIB Principles

RisingOaks’ DEIB Principles are the organizational commitments that provide RisingOaks with a tool to affirm at regular intervals that the organization’s direction is in alignment with its DEIB Statement.

• We commit to annually reviewing our DEIB policies for areas for improvement.
• We commit to active listening with each other, and to finding ways to gather the voices regarding their DEIB experiences within our organization at least every three years.

The steering committee recently developed a visual representation of the various roles involved in our work to date to help add clarity.

In this model, the red arrows identify who each individual or group is accountable to.

Employees are accountable to their supervisor who is accountable to the sr. leadership team.

The reference group (RG) members and belonging champions are accountable to their supervisor, but we have the dashed blue line indicating an indirect relationship between the RG and champions, and between the RG/champions and the employees at the centre.

The role of the RG member is to provide advice and guidance on DEIA policies, programs, practices and systems change and to guide implementation alongside the leadership team.

The role of the champions is to support the RG in implementing DEIA initiatives, including facilitation, engaging with employees, listening, providing support and then referring the employee to their supervisor for ongoing problem-solving or to address new concerns.

• Organizational assessment on diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism with input from employees, leaders and RisingOaks' families.
• Sense-making and debriefing of the assessment report.
• Virtual individual training: The Anti-Racism Course,6 modules. Funded by the Region of Waterloo, our service system manager.
• Facilitated dialogues with staff to dive deeper into key topics:
  • Reflections on The Anti-Racism Course
  • Barriers to Engagement
  • DEI and Tough Conversations
  • Movie Review & Discussion: Scarborough
• In-Person Group training & discussion: Equity, Diversity & Inclusion | Nurturing Communities of Belonging (formerly called Transforming Power, Privilege and Prejudice), 6 modules.
• Revisions of key policies that impact organizational health and belonging.
  • Code of Conduct (new)
  • Conflict Resolution (formerly Dispute Resolution)
  • Performance Management
  • Progressive Discipline
  • Workplace Harassment & Discrimination
• DEIB Communications:
  • DEIB Organizational Updates introduced in Spring 2024; to be issued quarterly
  • Communications Toolkits

What's Next?

• Development of training tools and videos to support the new or revised policies. 
• Fine-tune and test DEIB decision-making filters.
• Action planning sessions with the steering committee, RG members and champions.
• Draft the RisingOaks' DEIB Action Plan - with priorities, objectives and measures - for approval by the leadership team and ratification by the board of directors.
• The next DEIB Organizational Update is expected in early December.

Click the image below to see prior updates.