Language Justice
Our commitment to cultivating equity and enabling community in a functional multilingual space.
We foster access and create inclusive multilingual spaces for ourselves and our partners to assure everyone that their voices and ideas can be heard. When our staff and grantee partners can communicate in their own languages, more individuals can take part in Learning Lab activities.
WomenStrong builds gender equality by partnering with grassroots women-led organizations to achieve lasting change for the girls and women they serve. We see a language justice program as integral to cultivating equity while enabling community among ourselves and our Learning Lab partners.
Our commitment to language justice includes ensuring that we support the following, along with other needs we discover during the process of implementation:
- In group settings, participants choose a language they feel comfortable speaking. Our facilitators and/or presenters choose to speak a language they feel comfortable speaking.
- We make the written materials (articles, handouts, notes, and visual materials, such as slides, flipcharts, or the like) shared in the Learning Lab available in all WomenStrong languages.
- We include and use the cultural references and customs represented by each cultural group in the room.
- We seek to hire multilingual WomenStrong staff and consultants.
We understand language justice to be a process, rather than a goal.
We believe in functional multilingual spaces, in which two or more languages and cultures are integrated into the programming. As a small nonprofit, we set the process in motion by speaking with our partners about which languages we use in our Learning Lab. Currently, we offer translation and interpretation in English, French, and Spanish. As we grow as an organization, our language offerings should follow suit.
Ideas for promoting Language Justice and Equity
