Getting our house in order
As an outpouring of sorrow, rage and a righteous demand for racial justice and equality echo around the world, at Tech for Good Live we believe that silence is not an option.
We stand with the Black Lives Matter movement and we’re conscious that *our* voices are not the voices you should be listening to right now. But, we do have a platform, and we want to make sure we’re using it to amplify those voices that need to be heard. We posted a thread on our Twitter channel linking off to helpful resources, places to donate, and to amplify BIPOC voices (we’ve posted a link to that at the bottom of this article).
There is something we don’t want to be silent on though – what we are doing as a community to address our own failings in racial equality.
Tech for Good Live's mission has always been to promote, encourage, and raise awareness of the benefits of using technology for good; how to do it right and how to act more ethically in the tech sector. As the events of the last few weeks have unfolded, we've taken a hard look at ourselves and we know that we need to make some fundamental changes. We want to acknowledge our faults openly and talk about how we’re addressing them.
We started out as a bunch of mates who used to chat about tech over a beer and then decided to do a podcast and run some events. Very early on, as things began to snowball, we knew that we needed to bring in more voices, opinions, experiences, and backgrounds to create content that is fair, inclusive and diverse.
Diversity and inclusion isn’t something new to us. The events of the last few weeks haven’t suddenly made us realise that we have work to do to get our own house in order. We talk about racial inequality in tech and the charity sector all the time on the podcast and we’ve run events specifically on diversity and inclusion. Let me be clear, this work doesn’t excuse the lack of diversity in our team, it makes it worse, because we should be an example. What the events of the last few weeks have done is wake us up to the reality that we haven’t been working fast enough, and we haven’t been doing it well enough.
Below we’ve outlined some of the steps we’re taking. This will no doubt evolve and improve over time, but we want to be open with you, our community, about what we’re doing.
Changing our volunteer practices and diversifying the team. Whilst we’ve made some progress in the makeup of our team over the last few years in terms of gender, sexual orientation, and disability, the simple fact is that our team is still predominantly white. We must diversify our team to include Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) in the tech for good scene. This is not tokenism. We truly believe that if we want to be producing great content about tech for good, that content needs to come from a diverse team.
We would love you to reach out to us if you'd like to be involved in TfGL, but we’re aware that the answer isn’t to simply put the onus on other people to come to us to fix our failings.
That’s why we need to change our volunteer practices too. We’re an entirely volunteer-run organisation, and whilst it can at times be a real challenge for the team to run TfGL in addition to our jobs and family lives, the truth is we’re all in a place of privilege to be able to do what we do. Our current ways of working are a barrier to new people joining the team. We’re going to start from the ground up at redesigning our volunteer processes and roles to be more inclusive and to enable people to get involved in rewarding ways that accommodate their personal circumstances.
Amplify BIPOC voices. Moving forwards we want to make sure that more voices are amplified during our podcasts and events. As an immediate action, we are offering the Tech for Good Live podcast platform for Black Lives Matter. If there is a podcast that you want to make about being Black and working in tech, the bias in AI, or any topic relating to racial injustices in tech or the charity sector, then please get in touch here or reach out to us on Twitter via DM. If you are new to podcasting then the Tech for Good Live team will support you with production.
We know that more can, and must, be done in the long term. Not just in our community, but in the tech industry at large to fight racism and promote diversity and inclusion. If you have thoughts or suggestions on the actions that we’re taking, or if you want to get involved in the work that we do (as a member of the team, or as a guest on the podcast), please do get in touch with us.
If you want to find some resources about the Black Lives Matter movement and/or want to support the work that people are doing, here’s that thread we mentioned: https://twitter.com/techforgoodlive/status/1267708944824197120?s=20
Thank you.
The TfGL team