The Social Justice Taskforce (SJTF)
Ensuring that AEE is leading with our values of inclusion, diversity, equity & accessibility
About the Taskforce
AEE's Social Justice Task Force (SJTF) has the duty to help ensure AEE is doing all we can to realize our value of social justice. This can show up in many different ways including but not limited to:
- Evaluating potential partnerships with other businesses and organizations to see if they share our values
- Reviewing organizational documents to ensure we are using appropriate language, we are accessible to all and that we are holding ourselves to our values
- Providing resources for our members who are looking to align with social justice issues
- Reviewing of conference plans to ensure sound choices around diversity, equity and inclusion are being made.
The Social Justice task force, staff and the Board have created a goal:
To move past performative action into equitable practices.
AEE Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) Statement
AEE’s mission commits us to “building an inclusive and accessible community for experiential education professionals”.
Our organizational value of social justice is defined as:
Supporting people of diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and cultures is an integral part of developing successful experiential education programming.
Given that, we want to reaffirm that AEE is committed to being an organization where folx belong and are accepted for who they are. With this statement, we reaffirm our commitment to ensuring our members feel they belong in our community.
Additionally, as a membership organization, we are committed to providing resources and support to our members to develop and operate socially just and inclusive programming.
To that end, we the AEE staff and Board of Directors:
- Commit to diversity, working to bring members of many backgrounds and from around the globe into our organization and into leadership in our organization
- Commit to inclusion, taking intentional steps to support our membership in working across differences of race, culture, gender, and more
- Commit to equity, by creating systems to expose inequities in order to make opportunities within our field accessible by all.
We acknowledge that creating and sustaining an organization where all folx belong will be uncomfortable at times, but we’re excited for foundational work that is necessary to fulfilling the full spirit and intent of our mission and values.
We also know the above commitments require action, and we will follow up with plans to integrate this work into all our conferences, operations, programs, leadership, and other efforts.
Get Involved With the Taskforce
There are many ways to get involved with the Social Justice Taskforce at AEE including:
- Recommend a resource that we can provide to the community
- Provide input or feedback
- Make a request or ask a specific question
- Report a concern or incident
- Volunteer to help complete specific short-term tasks within committees!
Fill out the form below (click the green button) and provide a little more information about you and how you're hoping to get involved and a member of the SJTF will be in touch within 1-2 weeks!
