After this course, I am continuing my DEI experience, making it more crucial in my personal and professional life. Meeting and interacting with fellow changemakers, exchanging experiences and receiving guidance on key DEI issues offered me insights into practical tools to enhance inclusivity.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
A facilitated journey of un-learning and re-learning, to overcome our unconscious biases and make changemaking open and inclusive for everybody.
Course dates:
January 8th – March 19th, 2025
Registrations are now closed. Stay updated on the next edition of this course by signing up to our Newsletter.
About the learning journey
This is an invitation to join us in a brave space where we can all learn from each other as well as Ashoka Fellows and other community members who work in the field of DEI. Alongside DEI professionals and practitioners from across the world, we offer space for self-reflection on cognitive biases, power dynamics, leadership, and strategies for inclusion with a special focus on intersectionality. This learning journey will comprise of facilitated sessions and community of practice meetings.
Valuing diversity and creating a space where all are seen, respected, and included is central to building a world of changemakers or else we risk contributing to a deeper divide, between those who have time, space, and support to be changemakers and those who do not.
This learning journey is co-created by the One Community and the Ashoka global DEI teams. Join us in unpacking the complexity of cultivating a DEI-informed practice in the context of social change.
Learning objectives:
- Outsmart the unconscious biases, perspectives, and narratives that impact the way we perceive the world and act for social impact.
- Gain knowledge from global DEI practitioners sharing their experience and best practices to achieve DEI in our work.
- Engage in peer reflection with like-minded changemakers.
- Learn and reflect on how you can make your work truly accessible, allowing everyone to feel invited and able to contribute towards social change.
Who this is for
This experience is open to:
- Ashoka Fellows and members of their team
- Ashoka Young Changemakers
- Ashoka Support Network members (ASN)
- Ashoka staff
- Ashoka corporate partners and their employees
- Ashoka School Change leaders and educators
- Other Ashoka allies and collaborators
If you are not part of the Ashoka network yet but are interested in joining, we invite you to apply if you are part of:
- Institution (multinational companies and international NGOs)
- Government
- Ecosystem of support for young changemakers
- Public opinion influencers
We might ask you to share more context about your work or to join a quick selection interview. In the next edition, the dates and times of the sessions will be most suited for participants in Europe, Africa, the Arab World, and North and South America.
Registrations are now closed. Stay updated on the next edition of this course by signing up to our Newsletter.
Practical information
Format:
- Introduction to DEI: an online intro session of 2h
- DEI Deep Dives: 4 bi-weekly online sessions of 1h30 min each
- Community of practice meeting and closing: one online session of 2h
*The live sessions will be held on Zoom, we will use a learning platform to structure the learning journey.
*The sessions will be held in English.
Dates:
January to March 2025 (see the Modules section below for the specific dates).
Application closes on December 15th, 2024.
Commitment:
We encourage participants to take part in the whole experience. The intro session is compulsory as it will lay the base for further discussions. Certificates of participation will be offered to those who will be participating in a minimum of five sessions.
Guest Speakers
Gabriela Agustini
Founder and co-executive director of Olabi, a Brazilian not-for-profit organization with 10 years of work dedicated to the democratization of technologies and innovation scene. She is also a founding member of the Global Innovation Gathering (GIG), based in Berlin and operating globally; a speaker and teacher in free courses and national and international events (having been featured in more than 20 countries on 5 continents), co-organizer and author of the book "De Baixo para Cima" (Editora Aeroplano, 2014), presenter of "Conexão Maker", a reality show shown on a Brazilian educational TV about entrepreneurship, emerging technologies, and social impact, and presenter of the series "Exponential" on a public TV. She has a degree in journalism from the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP), a master's degree in design and society from PUC-Rio, and a certification in Future Studies from Parsons (The New School in NYU). He is a fellow of Ashoka, one of the world's largest networks of social entrepreneurs.
Weirong Li
Weirong Li is a global keynote speaker and the founder and CEO of Raw Culture, a media company focused on amplifying narratives of global citizenship for positive social impact. With a track record of success at TEDx, universities, corporate events, and the United Nations, Weirong specializes in global communications, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and genz (intergenerational collaboration). Fluent in English, Chinese, German, and Hungarian, her expertise bridges cultural differences and inspires positive action worldwide. She is also a UN Representative and Regional Director of World Information Transfer, a UN not-for-profit promoting health and environmental literacy. She is a merit scholar at New York University Stern School of Business and the Ashoka Austria Visionary Leaders Program.
Read more about Weirog and Raw Culture.
Christiana Bukalo
Christiana is pioneering the world's first community for and by stateless individuals, providing belonging, amplifying voices, and offering representation often denied due to citizenship status. By connecting grassroots empowerment with institutional change, she transforms these groups into active participants in societal dialogues. At the same time, she is working to shift societal perceptions, emphasizing that statelessness doesn't mean 'rightlessness,' and championing the intrinsic human right to belong and engage in society.
Diana Adams
Lawyer and LGBTQIA+ advocate Diana Adams believes that all families, regardless of biological relationship or legal marriage, are deserving of equal rights and recognition. Hence, Diana is expanding the legal and cultural definition of “family” – and proving that a more inclusive approach can help everyone (including and especially kids, who benefit from stable adult relationships).
Read more about Christiana and the Chosen Family Law Center.
Modules
Module 1 - Introduction to DEI
Creating a common baseline for further discussions about DEI
January 8th, 2025: 4 - 6 PM CET/ 6 – 8 PM EAT/ 10-12 AM EST
Module 2 - DEI Deep Dives
Module 3 - Community of Practice meeting
Previous Guest Speakers
Lorena Garcia Duran
Dr Veronica Escalante
Well, the systems are not broken, they work perfectly for those for whom they were created. For the people with the characteristics, the qualities of the identity of the ones that created the systems: the reference group. It's called a reference group because the entire systems, the entire ideology, and the beliefs are built to value those qualities of the identity of the reference group. When you do not belong to the reference group you’re put in this situation of marginalization."
Isabelle Christina
Dr Atuki Turner
Chloe B. McKenzie
Tarek Zeidan
Razan Ismail
Ewa Furgał
Angelou Ezeilo
Ryan Gersava
Lizzie Kiama
David Tišer
Uma Chatterjee
Ovidiu Condurache
Module Facilitation
Martyna Markiewicz
Martyna Markiewicz has been professionally supporting networks, organizations, groups and individual changemakers for almost 20 years.
She mainly focuses on the areas of gender equity and diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) and wellbeing in social change. Trainer, joker of the Theater of the Oppressed, Design Thinking moderator.
Member of the Board and Head of Partnerships at Ashoka Poland, DEI Lead for One Community Europe, member of Ashoka’s DEI Global Extended Team.