Our Strategic Priorities 2024–2027

This past year we re-evaluated our strategic priorities for the upcoming years. Throughout this process we aimed to listen and learn from diverse perspectives, striving to create strategic priorities that are deeply informed by our community (people we serve, families, employees, board members) as well as trends and learning in the sector and beyond. 

Given the dynamic context in which our organization operates, it is difficult to create a plan that allows for emergence and survives change upon change. Therefore, using a strategic thinking and learning organization approach, we develop ‘strategic intents’ that evolve over time, allowing us to be more adaptive in our process, responsive to opportunities and our community, and more resilient. This approach to strategy has served us well for many years, and our underlying values continue to deeply inform and support our strategy approach. These values are: 

• Embrace complexity

• Adapt and evolve

• Practice in person-centred ways

• Build and share knowledge

• Seek creative collaborations

Our Strategic Priorities 2024–2027

We are committed to the following strategic priorities to ensure our organization remains healthy, adaptive, and able to make progress on our mission in responsive and innovative ways. These priorities we believe at present will help us effectively navigate, respond to, and thrive within current policy and funding contexts.

How Humanized Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Principles and Practices Show Up in Our Collective Work

Our commitment to EDI and anti-discrimination

Our Skills Society vision is “a community where every individual is a valued citizen deserving respect, dignity and rights”. Central to our vision is the desire to build a community where everyone belongs as they are. Skills Society is dedicated to fostering an inclusive environment free from discrimination and which supports the dignity of all within our community. 

We believe an inclusive community is one: 

• where everyone has opportunities to share their gifts and talents;

• where every individual feels they belong and is valued for their own identities, culture, viewpoints, and traditions; and

• that recognizes our shared humanity while also celebrating our unique individuality.

Skills Society has long-established policies and practices that show we don’t just talk about, but act on valuing diversity, equity, and social justice. We are committed to (un)learning and acting on being inclusive to people of all genders, sex and sexual orientation, abilities, ages, religions, non-religious perspectives, social class, and race. As part of this value, we are continuously (un)learning and improving to ensure our collective work keeps us all moving towards our vision and centers us in supporting the citizenship and deep belonging of people with developmental disabilities in community. 

EDI is woven into the fabric of our work 

What we think is roughly right in our approach to EDI is we believe humanized EDI and EDI continuous learning should be woven into our culture, practice, and policies. Our priority “strengthen healthy organizational culture, inclusive practices, continuous improvement, and innovation” encompasses the continued learning and strategic work around EDI.

It’s important to remember that we exist as an organization to serve people with developmental disabilities in being able to live their best lives possible as full citizens in community. While Skills Society has and continues to be on an unlearning/learning journey around EDI, there are guiding ‘principles’ that inform our actions on our commitment to this work and anti-discrimination. Our approach is: 

• informed by our disability rights roots and work;

• relational and in keeping with being good treaty relatives; 

• grounded in our community - the people we serve, families, and employees; and

• embodies our values and challenges the status quo.

Humanized EDI principles we steward and learn from

As part of our commitment to being better Treaty relatives, Skills Society in partnership with Naheyawin, hosted an event to commemorate, reflect, and learn in honour of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Aimed at fostering knowledge, understanding, and connection with a special emphasis on Truth and Reconciliation, the event included engaging discussions, storytelling, an update on our journey towards reconciliation, reflections on our collective journey, and time to feast and visit. Special thanks to Jacquelyn and Hunter Cardinal from Naheyawin for curating this experience for our Skills Society community. 

• At Skills Society we believe our humanized1 EDI approach should:

• be grounded in our vision, mission, values, and core purpose of helping people with intellectual disabilities thrive in community life;

• focus more towards uniting a diverse community more than it divides, by leaning more towards calling people in rather than calling people out so that learning can be more possible; 

• recognize our shared humanity while also celebrating our unique individuality;

• strive to hold space to unlearn/learn from, value, and empower people of many diverse group identities and perspectives;

• weave humanizing EDI learning and practices through all of our policies, practices, committees, and related statements;

• commit to supporting robust learning on how everyone in our Skills community can be leaders and contribute to a healthy, inclusive community and workplace; this also grounds us in our efforts to be good treaty relatives, where part of our collective commitment is to be in good relations with all people, animals, and other beings with whom we share this land; 

• encourage thoughtful sharing of power that is not oversimplified - recognizing roles hold accountability and power differently;

• embrace the art of what’s possible with the resources we have available to weave our EDI approach into Skills Society;

• encourage reflexivity, where situations are not only seen through lenses of power² imbalance, but also through deep human lenses of shared humanity, compassion, joy, awe, camaraderie, and community; and

• critique the systems³ while empathizing and showing compassion for the humans caught by biases in systems.

Learn more about how EDI shows up in practice on our public webpage skillssociety.ca/equity-diversity-and-inclusion

---

1. Humanized refers to approaches or actions that centre understanding, empathy, dignity, and respect for individual difference while simultaneously recognizing people’s common humanity. As part of our (un)learning journey, we call in ᑕᑕᐊᐧᐤ tatawâw - there is room for who you are, where you are from, and who you are becoming. 

2. Power refers to the control or influence some individuals or groups have over others, shaping how resources, rights, and opportunities are distributed, and can lead to some individuals or groups having privileges(advantages) that are not equitably available to everyone.

3. Systems refers to the set of rules, processes, or structures organizations, societies, or groups use to operate or make decisions.

Skills Society 2024 Annual Report