Blog

One thing that I have noticed is especially when I'm out and about walking on the sidewalks is that sometimes the sidewalks aren't accessible.

It is the second week of March and it is highlighting social workers. I wanted to give a special shout out to all my fellow social workers out there.

Parenting a biracial child has been really interesting and has been one of the greatest privileges and gifts that I have had in my life to be the parent of my now 17 year old son.

Today marks the end of Black History Month, but the work needs to continue all year long.

It started because of a boy who was ridiculed and bullied because he wore a pink shirt. The colour of pink in the Western context is assumed to be gender specific and that it's only for girls. 

Books are being banned not only in the States but also here in Canada

Particularly, these discourses are happening in schools and as they pertain to children. Books such as The Blues Eye by Tony Morrison, books for children that use the pronouns they and them.

Those are two entry points that I have found during this work of equity, diversity and inclusion on the perspectives of people who enter the space of EDI learnings or conversations or organizational change.

It is a time to not only celebrate and highlight the greatness of folks who are from those communities, but also do things such as addressing how anti Black racism exists in your organizations orin your communities or in yourselves.

The difference between EDI and DEI and the work of equity, diversity and inclusion?

People often ask, what's the difference? Why does it matter whether we put the D first or the E first? For myself, I always put "E" in equity first because we are working towards equitable outcomes.

A PIT check is a “point in time” check and it is something that I offer as part of my consultant work. And what it is is that it is a review of an organization from top to bottom, from side to side, looking at the services, the supports and the organizational structure and how it actually embeds equity into practice. 

Racial trauma is the impact of racism on people's mental health, on their wellbeing and how it traumatizes people to not only experience racism, but also witness things that are happening to people of their own race as well as others of racialized communities.

Recently I was reading an article recently about international students in the Kitchener-Waterloo region, which is where I live, and how they are a high rising group of people experiencing food insecurity, meaning that they don't have access to affordable food.

Sometimes the pace is very fast and we're caring for everybody else, but we don't take the time to care for ourselves and that's also part of having how dominance and colonization continues by us being overworked, so resting as a form of resistance.

I'm not Indigenous to these lands so when I talk about land acknowledgments, be it in my class or be it in my consulting work, I always frame it in the language of land acknowledgement and commitment.

Joy is something that I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about throughout my life.

One thing that we don't often talk about, that we should talk about in EDI work, is climate justice

“BIPOC” is a term we hear a lot, but there are a number of reasons I don’t like this term. As we learn and grow, it is important that we continue to change the language.

Truthfully, when your equity, diversity, and inclusion experiences are negative, any positive interactions feel incredibly meaningful. It’s important for me to also share these positive experiences, along with the negative ones. Realistically, it is so simple: treating people like they are human, with respect, and not making assumptions about them when they enter a room.

Welcome to my new blog. I’m Iona Sky (they/them/she/her) and this is where I will share my candid thoughts, personal experiences of healing and self-care and my real life experiences working with nonprofits, corporations and people everywhere on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).