DIVERSITY & ACCESSIBILITY WORKING GROUP

Minutes of Meeting #3 - Sunday, June 20, 2004, 7:30 pm

Present: Cortez Rainey, Chair; Sara LittleFeather, Recorder; Dan Hessey; Lodro Rinzler

Not present: Babo Harrison; Linda Watson; Maria Vargas; Shawn Wheeler; Martine Remondin; Hamish Maclaren; Kai Yee; and Veronica Guzman.

Working Group Objectives

After reviewing the meeting agenda, discussion turned to the Working Group Objectives:

• Inform the Shambhala community why there is a need for greater diversity and accessibility within our mandala.
  
  
• Inform the Shambhala community about diversity and accessibility problems and promising diversity and accessibility activities that are occurring within the mandala.
  
  
• Develop a list of practical steps that Shambhala Centers can follow to promote greater diversity and accessibility.
  
  
• Submit recommendations to the Mandala Governing Council for promoting diversity and accessibility throughout the Shambhala community.

We went over these objectives and everyone agreed that they are what the Working Group is trying to accomplish.  While going over the objectives, other issues were discussed: 

• the idea of posting suggestions for promoting diversity and accessibility on the Shambhala website—even before submitting our final recommendations.
  
  
• Lodro’s idea of posting Shambhala’s Vision Statement on Diversity and Accessibility at all Shambhala Center entrances, on the Shambhala website and on all Shambhala brochures and program announcements.

It was felt that taking these steps could send a powerful message to people about where the community stands on the issue of diversity and accessibility.

Notes on Diversity and Accessibility

We discussed Dan’s revised treatise: Notes on Diversity and Accessibility.  Several suggestions were made:

• Make the “Insiders vs. Outsiders” section of the treatise more relevant to the issue of diversity and accessibility.
  
  
• Place greater emphasis on discussing the frustration, hurt and pain that is caused when we don’t deal with or are blind to diversity and accessibility issues in our community.  In this regard, we discussed the importance of follow through and acknowledgement as important elements of welcoming.   Whether one gets left out of a party may or may not be a big deal to a person.  But when a person feels left out of dharma practice—that is a huge deal.
  
  
• Provide clear guidance on how we can begin to address issues of diversity and accessibility in a personal way, such as through introspection and self-examination, identifying how our identities and prejudices affect our worldviews and ways of relating to others.  On this issue, Dan asked members to provide feedback on what kind of “how to’s” we can come up with.

Our discussion on Notes was as usual intense.  We all agreed that we are getting closer to the “nitty gritty” issues of diversity and accessibility.  Dan said the feedback will be used to make further revisions to the document. 

Vision Statement on Diversity and Accessibility

Sarah read a draft Shambhala Vision Statement on Diversity and Accessibility several times.  There was much discussion over the word “warrior” and whether “we of the Shambhala community” would be better.  She also read the Working Group Mission Statement. 

There followed a lengthy discussion about what constitutes a Vision Statement, Mission Statement and Strategic Objectives.  It was decided that Dan and Sarah would get together by phone to discuss the Vision Statement and send notes on their discussion to other members of the Working Group.

Diversity and Accessibility Survey

Since all meeting participants did not have copies of the Practitioner and Center Survey with them (the Working Group intends to use the surveys to obtain information about practitioner and Center experiences with diversity and accessibility issues), we talked in general about the surveys. 

We agreed that the survey language is important and that we don’t want to use it to blame people.  We agreed that we want to use questions that encourage survey respondents to relate to their personal experiences, and essay questions might be the best way to do that.  We decided that since we would only be surveying 20 Centers, it would not be too difficult for the group to review the essay responses. 

Conclusion

We noted that a majority of the Working Group members were absent, and we decided to get more input from them in the development of Practitioner, Center and Governing Council surveys.  Cortez said he would contact all Working Group members to request that they provide feedback on the treatise, the diversity and accessibility surveys, and the vision/mission statements not later than June 26th.  This would allow us to make final revisions to these documents before meeting with the Review Group to discuss them and other aspects of our work.

We decided that the next meeting of the Working Group would be held on Sunday, July 4th, 7:30 p.m. and that we would meet with the Review Group on Sunday, July 18th, 7:30 p.m.

The meeting ended at 9:00 p.m.