Since our July letter addressing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), ACA has continued to form a working group to address our DEI-related efforts and action items. The group has met a few times and has begun to develop a list of potential short-, medium- and long-term goals. We have discussed which “ism’s” we should focus on and have begun to further define the structure of our group.
We have reached a consensus on a few guiding principles:
- We really want this to be community “bottoms up” effort and not a staff controlled “top down” process.
- We should not shortcut this effort by jumping straight to action items. We first need to thoughtfully conduct an assessment of our stakeholders and use the results to inform and guide our actions.
And we will be taking a few immediate steps:
- We will reach out to the several grass roots organizations that are also working on paddling/outdoor diversity.
- ACA’s Board of Directors has begun to identify potential nominees to fill three board member positions that will open up this fall. The DEI group will work with the Board to identify candidates that could bring more diverse backgrounds, viewpoints, and passion to our organization.
- We will include DEI-related programming (discussion & training opportunities) in our Virtual Conference, which will be held this Fall.
Beth Spilman
Executive Director