Phases
Project Description
Creating a Culture of Inclusion at Bow Valley College was a campus-based initiative to help create a culture that embraces intercultural respect and understands full participation through a lens of inclusion and diversity. This project was guided by Bow Valley College staff, faculty, and students to develop an inclusion-based staff orientation toolkit through a series of focus groups and world cafés. An orientation toolkit included a workshop curriculum and an awareness campaign.
Overview
The Culture of Inclusion project met its goal to develop staff orientation resources – a web site, a guided discussion group, and a desk-top information card – informed by employee engagement.
Feedback was gathered through a series of 13 focus groups and two world café sessions that included over 70 College staff and faculty, representing five schools and eight administrative units. Through meaningful conversations, participants engaged with ideas about how a rights-based understanding of inclusion and diversity can be reflected in staff and faculty orientation material.
The year-long project that started in early 2019 was guided by an advisory group with representation from across campus and with the support of partners at SODEXO. The project team worked to facilitate the engagement, create the resources informed and inspired by what was heard from staff and faculty, and will now continue to share this work with the campus community.
Resources
Creating a Culture of Inclusion at Bow Valley College developed three resources that together make up a staff orientation toolkit exploring individual human rights through the lens of diversity and inclusion. The toolkit consists of a web site, a guided discussion group, and a desk-top information card, all that are inspired and informed by employee engagement.
This web-based resource offers employees a direct way to explore individual human rights while offering access to straightforward information about human rights and how to respect others while fostering an inclusive environment on campus.
The guided discussion group includes a facilitator guide, posters, a presentation, and participant worksheets, and has been designed so it can be peer-delivered. It was developed in response to staff and faculty expressing a desire for less traditional workshops and more opportunities to have meaningful conversations in small group face-to-face settings that includes a consideration for introverts with different learning styles.
The final piece of the toolkit is a three-dimensional desktop information card that offers a direct, simple, and accessible entry point to more information about individual human rights.
All Bow Valley College employees are welcome to email globalaccess@bowvalleycollege.ca for more information on how to access these resources.