A key objective of our organizational strategy is to build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization, with deeper connections to our partners around the world and the communities we ultimately serve. Underpinning this goal is a commitment to embedding anti-oppression and social justice practices in all aspects of our work—not only in our programming and partnerships but in our staff composition, organizational policies, working culture, and beyond. We see this as an essential prerequisite for delivering on our strategy and living up to our organizational values.

In 2020, we started a comprehensive process to examine how we live up to our values, our strengths, and areas where we had room for improvement. After a thorough series of interviews, surveys, meetings, and workshops, which included the creation of a special “task force” team (composed of staff and board members), we reached a diagnosis and a plan, which we’ll be applying and improving over time. Our strategy identifies five priority action areas designed to deliver on our Equity and Justice commitments. They are:

• Ensuring an Equitable Compensation Framework: CESR prides itself on being home to an increasingly global team with a rich and diverse background in the human rights and economic, social and environmental justice movements. Bolstering our policies on employment conditions, compensation, and other entitlements, taking into account the CESR team’s global presence emerged as a key priority

• Fostering a Culture of Learning and Advancement: CESR is an organization committed to supporting its team to flourish—in their current and future positions.  This includes a commitment to making the workplace as responsive as possible to people’s individual circumstances and conducive to people from different cultures and backgrounds being fully valued and able to thrive. The CESR team will therefore continue to undertake collective professional development opportunities, as well as create spaces for feedback and learning. 

• Enhancing Organizational Wellbeing: CESR has a clear commitment to flexible working practices and ensuring a caring, supportive workplace, including for those with care responsibilities or other personal commitments, and those with disabilities. Creating flexible working conditions that take into account everyone’s personal circumstances while ensuring cohesion throughout the team has been our priority as we continue to ensure equity and justice in the workplace. 

• Strengthening Organizational Practices: Ensuring that the EEJ values are reflected in our organizational culture and practices is a top priority.  CESR is committed to collecting tools and resources that can strengthen our individual and organizational practices related to: collective leadership,  inclusive decision-making; cross-cultural communication (including giving and receiving feedback), conflict resolution as well as disrupting oppressive behaviors.

• Creating Equitable Partnerships: Almost all our work is done in partnerships, or through coalitions, networks and other collaborative spaces at the local, national, regional and global level. We strongly believe in embodying these same principles in our partnerships and in the way we work with external stakeholders, partners and allies. Through our programmatic work, we are committed to establishing platforms and partnerships, creating opportunities and supporting movements that center the voices of our partners and the communities we serve especially from the Global South.

Ensuring that EEJ commitments are integrated into our guiding principles and organizational values requires critical reflection and a rigorous evaluation process. We will continue to monitor the progress of our strategy implementation, and the efficacy of our organizational policies and processes, to continue to stay close to the values that we embrace.

Do you want to know more about how we’re embodying equity and justice? Read our blog post about the process and get in touch!