Running DEI Trainings with the Green Party

Core Objectives:

When the Green Party of Ontario (GPO) approached CultureAlly, they saw two main concerns they wanted to help address through training. Through a survey we conducted of the demographic of the membership it became clear there was underrepresentation of people of colour in the GPO. As a strategy was formed to recruit more members of colour, it was essential that the GPO ensured they were recruiting people into an inclusive environment. Meaning there was a necessity for training and education amongst staff and current members.

Secondly, recognizing that representation is important, the GPO had been working for years to increase representation of candidates. They had achieved gender equity and had great representation of persons with disabilities, however similar to their membership, were focusing on increasing the representation of people of colour. Candidates can find themselves target to a lot of scrutiny and are especially vulnerable during elections. To help prepare candidates and their support and allies around them, CultureAlly is currently creating a custom training to ensure they have the resources and support they needed to succeed as a candidate.

Unconscious Bias Training:

CultureAlly designed a custom training that ran at the GPO convention in June 2021. This training started with an introduction to unconscious bias and transitioned to a workshop where participants went through real scenarios and decisions they may face within the party. They were trained on how to understand and detect what biases may play a role in their decisions and how to mitigate them. Lastly participants were provided with takeaways for future use and real world application.

Since the main strategy for the GPO was in membership recruitment, the training covered important key topics such as tokenism and micro-aggressions.

Ongoing e-Learning:

With the success of the first trainings, the GPO decided to role out the CultureAlly continuous learning software to continue to provide DEI training to their staff and members. Rolling out the CultureAlly learning tool allows individual team members to continue their own personal learning based on their own topics of interest.