Yoga Girl® Equity and Social Justice
Yoga Girl® Statement of Values for Equity and Social Justice
Yoga Girl® believes justice is an essential part of our work as yoga teachers and students.
In order to fulfill our mission and build a more just and equitable world, we must take into account our society’s systematic inequalities, including those based on race, class, gender, ability, and geography.
We are committed to actively working toward greater diversity and serving social justice in our workplace and in our physical and online communities.
We honor diversity by including a variety of personal experiences, values, and worldviews that arise from race, ethnicity, gender/gender identity, religious and spiritual beliefs, class, age, color, sexual orientation, disability, immigrant status, and national origin. To us, social justice means being true to our commitment of challenging social, cultural, and economic inequalities imposed on individuals arising from any differential distribution of power, resources, and privilege.
We, as leaders and the Yoga Girl® staff team, commit to the following values and principles to guide our work:
- Yoga Girl® works to prevent and address bias in the projects, programs, trainings and offerings we provide.
- We prioritize improving access to our work for under-resourced, QTBIPOC (queer, trans, bi, indigenous, people of color) and immigrants to improve the outcomes of these communities.
- We seek out, listen to and trust expert contributors in the areas of inclusion and diversity to guide our work. We work with experts to consistently examine and leverage our privilege for the good of as many as possible.
- We train and empower staff, members, volunteers and community members to step up as leaders.
- We build strong, positive, collaborative relationships with each other as staff, students, volunteers, community partners, and decision-makers.
- We reduce financial barriers to our work by providing scholarships and fair financial compensation to our vendors and production teams.
Strength in Diversity
Yoga Girl® works to build an environment where people of all races, ethnicities, incomes, ages, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities, abilities, and countries of origin feel welcomed, seen, celebrated, and treated equitably.
We promote diversity and inclusiveness in our Board of Directors, staff, members, and volunteers.
We create environments that allow for voices that are less-often heard to be heard and participate in the decision-making process. We may ask more dominant voices, including our own, to step back and do more listening.
We appreciate that the people and organizations we work with may have different values and priorities than our own. We will actively seek open dialogues to figure out our shared values and priorities, and we are willing to change course as needed as we learn more.
We believe that it is essential to encourage a diverse range of perspectives and experiences within our organization as a whole so that we are making decisions that best reflect the varied needs of our community, with traditionally marginalized voices at the center. We recognize this work as being in progress, and that the process of creating a more just and equitable world is never finished.
To move toward the goals outlined above, Yoga Girl® will strive to:
- Create an anti-racist environment where all staff, board members and volunteers are seen, respected, and supported to participate fully.
- Support justice education and racial justice awareness not only within our team, but within our wider community as well.
- Continuously review our website, promotional materials and overall for language and images that highlight racial/social justice and inclusive, appropriate language.
We recognize this work is crucial and is always in progress. We strive to do our best as and to continue to learn and grow as the process of creating a more just and equitable world is never finished.