{"id":4699,"date":"2020-05-19T15:51:22","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T19:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/?p=4699"},"modified":"2024-07-24T12:04:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T16:04:44","slug":"equity-by-design-a-reflection-on-how-to-build-equitable-teams-and-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/equity-by-design-a-reflection-on-how-to-build-equitable-teams-and-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Equity by Design: A Reflection on How to Build Equitable Teams and Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Paula Giraldo (CAS\u201921) is on a mission to help children build confidence while teaching them about gender equity and inter-gender empathy. She\u2019s starting this project with the help of the Innovation Pathway<\/a> program and a recent invitation to join Innovate@BU at Ashoka U\u2019s virtual Exchange Conference<\/a>, an annual global gathering for social impact educators and college students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Paula is part of BU\u2019s Peer Health Exchange, a group that teaches health classes to Boston high schoolers. While her teaching experience will be valuable as she develops her own project, she chose to attend Ashoka \u201cbecause I want to see how I can make my project the most sensitive and equitable it can be, so that I can relay my messages to my subjects in a way that is not tone-deaf and actually helpful.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One workshop in particular, Equity in Design hosted by the Creative Reaction Lab, helped her think about her idea to develop an equitable curriculum for kids between 8-10 years and how to recruit the right team members.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The workshop left her with three principles that can be used by students developing new projects and ideas of all kinds.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Acknowledging history and healing and dismantling power constructs need to be at the core of your goals in any social endeavor you take on, or else you will continue to perpetuate equity and oppression.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span><\/i>If you don\u2019t begin your project by diminishing the effect that these oppressive constructs have on the community you\u2019re trying to help, then you won\u2019t be able to create the desired change,\u201d said Paula.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

2. To design equitable outcomes, we must first build our own humility and empathy.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHumility asks us to step outside of ourselves, listen, and absorb someone else’s truth,\u201d she explained. \u201cIn real life, this could be discussing race publicly within teams, or making note of your personal assumptions, privilege, power, and identity when interacting with others.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Paula shared an exercise that teams can start with by asking each member the following questions:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n