Listening is a powerful skill. Listening to what Indigenous and equity-deserving groups have to say, is a crucial first step in equity-focused work. Starting to understand experiences of Indigenous and equity-deserving children and families depends on learning to listen and seek information from community and persons with lived experience. Who will you engage with and listen to?

Learning is an ongoing process. Reflect on your knowledge of the issues and communities to identify gaps in your learning. Consider learning from the expertise and wisdom of rights holders, persons with lived experience, stakeholders, community members, and partners. What do you need to learn about? How can you start or continue learning?

Relationship building is an essential part of equity work. Genuine relationships are an investment of time, energy, and other resources. Sustaining relationships takes a long term commitment to early engagement, collaboration, co-development, reciprocity, equal partnership, and power shifting. Regular information sharing, keeping open lines of communication, and targeting outreach are part of building relationships.

What relationships already exist? What relationships need to be developed? How can you build lasting relationships?

Responsive programming and policies consider and address the different experiences, needs, and interests of Indigenous and equity-deserving groups. Service users, community members, and stakeholders impacted by an issue want to see results and evidence of their input in planning and decision-making. This means reflecting their input and implementing needs-based approaches that are responsive to a range of diverse needs and life experiences. What did you learn from engaging and listening? How can you apply this to respond to identified needs?

Taking action refers to the specific efforts towards reaching goals, addressing challenges, and meeting needs with Indigenous and equity deserving groups. Taking action needs to occur in the context of listening and learning, building relationships, and being responsive. Taking action can mean following through on commitments, allocating resources, addressing errors, and being accountable for unintended outcomes. While taking action, check back in with identified stakeholders: continue listening, being responsive to what you hear, and maintaining relationships.

How can you take action? What barriers are expected to taking action? Are there ways to address these barriers and proceed?

Review the examples provided to learn about how different organizations are using intentional practices in their work. Next up, visit the Drivers for Change page to learn about various strategies, sample tools, and readings that could be useful within your program or initiative.