BUILDING INCLUSIVE ORGANISATIONS

These days, there is a lot of talk on inclusion and despite these many talks, it is sad to see that very few people walk the talk of inclusion. I have always wondered how a talk on building inclusive organisations would look like and after my experiences with World Pulse and later Mobility International, I decided to come up with a talk on building inclusive organisations and what better place is to start than with my amazing fellow ambassadors of World Pulse?

And so, I took up the challenge of making this possible. I ran the idea over with Dawn and she as usual, wholeheartedly encouraged me to give it a shot. Well, like they say, life happens. I felt sick and the talk was pushed to November. The D-Day came and as if there were so many conspiring against this talk taking place, we had power failure, two hours to the Thriving Thursday meeting. Undeterred, I still went ahead to do the presentation with Dawn’s support again. I was thankful for the oversight to share the slides with Dawn the day or so before because it would have been very tricky. Using my phone for the presentation was tricky as I appeared to be constantly between frozen and dancing.

I started by thanking everyone who joined the break out group. I was weary naturally, but I was inspired, especially by the knowledge that at World Pulse, we do not fail but we uplift and cheer each other.

A simple definition of what disability was all about was the beginning to a 20+mins  presentation after which, I would go on to talk about the various types of disability, inclusive organisations we could emulate and why inclusion is very necessary and important for a progressive world.

In the course of my presentation, I would also touch on why it is important to be more empathetic, seeing a person and their potential first before their disability, creating a work friendly and encouraging environment, budgeting and the need to let those with disabilities represent themselves and not just be ticks on pieces of paper. Most especially, the need to work hard on fighting unconscious biases that impede on creating inclusive organisations.

The attention given to this version of my #TEDWP 🙂 was both inspiring and motivating. My weariness died and I was happy I finally got to have the talk and I know from this, I would gladly give the talk again to another group.

I had some questions at the end, I am not so sure if I did justice to the questions. Trying to focus on the sign language interpreter while at the same time read any incoming messages in the chat box was tricky. However, I tried to answer Kat’s question on budgeting and I know I didn’t finish because the break room bell went off and so, I will try to include my answer here.: 

While it is true that budgeting may be a factor for some people especially struggling organisations, that is usually always not the case. Why many complain about their inability to be more inclusive and hide behind budget is not so much as a lack of money or resources but the failure to plan. Yes, many fail to plan or bank on the fact that someone with a disability might be interested in their program or have the skills they are looking for.. So, with planning, budgeting becomes secondary and inclusion is possible. More of the presentation highlights could be found on this video here.  The future is inclusive and all progressive societies must learn to walk the walk, not only talk the talk of inclusion.

Thank you all again for joining my talk and cheering on.