Diversity, Inclusion & Equality
Diversity, Inclusion & Equality
ESDO’s mission on diversity, inclusion and equality is both our simplest and most complex; simple because the gaps and needs are clear and compelling and our conviction and passion for the issues are strong; and complex because diversity, inclusion and equality issues are challenging and often associated with deeply entrenched ideas that span the political, personal and cultural.
At ESDO, diversity, inclusion and equality is both a standalone mission and one that cuts across our other missions; Climate, Environment, Health & Food Systems; Conflict, Peace & Stabilisation; Poverty, Livelihoods, Education & Innovation; Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking; and Refugees, Migration & Borders.
Through our Diversity, Inclusion and Equality mission, ESDO strives to combine the following approaches in all our work. In modelling this methodology, ESDO aspires to be a practice leader in it:
⇒ An intersectional approach that recognises that no person is one dimensional. We seek to identify overlapping dimensions of marginalisation, discrimination and exclusion that combine gender, age, disability and other context-specific diversity factors to create new and more complex categories of marginalisation.
Social Inclusion
Gender
Diversity & Equality
⇒ A holistic approach that recognises the need for mainstreaming and standalone/targeted actions across all sectors of humanitarian and development, including protection, sexual and reproductive health and rights, food security and nutrition, WASH and all other technical sectors.
⇒ A feminist approach that identifies who holds power and strategies to challenge and shift it; is collaborative at least and co-creative at best; goes beyond simple gender binaries and established hierarchies; and elevates emotions and wellbeing.
⇒ A localisation approach that aspires for communities to own, drive and validate all projects and programs that serve them; prioritises working in partnership with local actors and communities; recognises the centrality of local knowledge, the lived experience of diverse groups of affected people and local and community-based leadership, activism, volunteerism and networking.
What we’re doing
ESDO’s Diversity, Inclusion & Equality Practice is designed to leverage ESDO’s unique capabilities by focusing on:
⇒ Consult to project and program implementers by providing specialist gender, LGBTQI and vulnerable population inclusion in project design.
⇒ Increasing, through research, the knowledge base on how to prevent male social exclusion from leading to gender based violence, greater inequality, extremism and detrimentally prejudiced views.
⇒ Deliver community behavioural change campaigns to increase tolerance of LGBTQI persons, and reduce gender based violence.
⇒ Evaluate projects and programs to increase the knowledge base of effective programming for equality.
© European Sustainable Development Organisation, Ireland