Services
Our approach to DEIJ work and working with clients
We dig beneath the soil to the roots to understand how land, water, wildlife, people and power are connected; how soil can be made toxic by White supremacy, settler colonialism and other systems of oppression; and how communities resisting oppression have transformed the soil into sites of healing and resilience.
We are not going to dismantle systemic oppression in a workshop, in a plan, or even over the course of a year. Like waves, which are iterative and responsive to the wind, the moon, gravity, and all the flora and fauna beneath them, our approach is responsive to your unique organizational ecosystem and needs and may not always be linear in flow.
As individual stones can change the course and shape of a river, we believe that every individual has a role to play in shifting culture and in the evolution of their organizations toward equity and justice. Our job is to support you in understanding what role you play in the social movement ecosystem.
Our practices are fluid and emergent like flowing water; to move forward we often have to work through the obstacles and dams that are right in front of us. This means our approach may shift over time and appear to meander, but we are always heading toward the ocean of collective liberation.
Our work often unearths internal cultural issues that need to be addressed in order for DEIJ work to be sustainable in the long term. Like mushrooms, we support you in transforming toxic cultures and systems into a nourishing environment where your staff thrive.
A footnote on our approach: We take inspiration from many teachers, and primarily adrienne maree brown and Robin Wall Kimmerer, in framing our work using a biomimicry approach.
What we actually do
This is going to be frustrating… it depends. Because we work to customize everything to clients, it’s tough to outline exactly what we might offer without having a conversation with your first. A detailed catalog of our services is available here, but note that this is subject to change based on your specific needs. Here are a few things we can tell you for sure:
We’re most excited about longer term engagements, which give us the chance to really get to know you, forge a relationship, and build lasting structures for a more equitable and just organization. These engagements often look like creating a holistic DEIJ plan, a process that includes foundational knowledge building, extensive data gathering, experiential learning, and finally a DEIJ implementation plan that aims to empower staff and boards to take meaningful and coordinated DEIJ action.
The vehicles through which we support you can look like webinars, workshops, one-on-one consulting, coaching, data gathering, auditing existing systems, creating curriculum, providing train the trainers, and creating plans.
We’re also excited to brainstorm engagements with you. In the past, we’ve facilitated long-term learning and team building work with networks, gathered discrete data, built curriculum around the intertwining histories of conservation and systemic oppression in the U.S., and collaborated with other consultants with whom you’re already working.
And finally, it’s helpful for you to know what we don’t do
- We aren’t HR specialists, meaning we won’t help address specific personnel issues, write a new family leave policy, or provide harassment training.
- We aren’t change management consultants; the work we do always requires change, so we ask that you come ready for significant changes (which might include anything from changes to the way you interpret your mission, to your organizational structure, to the way your board functions, to basic infrastructure).
- We don’t work with organizations in which key leaders believe systemic oppression (e.g. racism, sexism) doesn’t exist.
- We are not a box check for required staff training; we work with people who are excited and motivated to do this work and support them with tools and resources to move it forward.