Linda Koenders
The Committee exchanged many emails over the past few months and met via MS TEAMS on January 27 to discuss the results of our National Survey and to consider next steps. The Committee agreed that it would be a good idea to create a working group made up of Black Members, to provide lived experiences to assist us in our mandate. A call out letter will be going out soon; Brother Aristil has agreed to be part of the group.
In our discussions we noticed that some Committee Representatives were part of a Local EO Committee, so we decided to poll the Locals to see how many had their own Equity Committee, or a designated person to handle such issues. We are currently analyzing this data to see how we can engage the membership more at the Local level.
In discussions with our National President regarding the terms of office for the appointed members, it was noted that in fact the current representatives had surpassed their 3-year mandated term. As the representatives are appointed and not elected, a new call out letter will be issued soon to appoint 5 new representatives. This is especially important since the new Committee will be tasked with planning 4 conferences in 2022 (3 Regional and 1 National).
Greg and I met with CRA on January 21, as part of NUMEED. As the Committee had not met for some time due to the pandemic and changes in representatives on the CRA side, we discussed drafting new Terms of Reference, along with accessibility issues and the implementation of the NEEDC Action Plan to address racism at the CRA.
The Committee sees the roll out of Anti-Black Racism training to be given to Executive Council and at the up-coming Presidents Conference in March as an important step in beginning to educate our membership.
Respectfully submitted,
Linda Koenders
Chair of the Committee