New Staff EDI Team Co-Chairs for 2020
In 2019, as part of a partnership with Erica Baruch Consulting, USA Ultimate created an internal EDI Team with staff members Julia Lee and Larry Melton serving as inaugural co-chairs. Together with Erica, our two co-chairs dedicated 50% of their work time providing learning opportunities for the board, staff and community and managing our EDI initiatives throughout the year. Some of those initiatives include the collection and publication of gender pronouns at our flagship club events, the second annual EDI Forum at the U.S. Open and the establishment of the Community Development Grant. In 2020, Julia will move back as co-chair but will still provide assistance to the EDI team, particularly through working with our Community Liaison Volunteers, and Stacey Waldrup will take her place and work with Larry to lead the EDI Team.
Shanye Crawford Named EDI National Outreach Director
With a strategic focus on engaging more youth from underserved communities in 2020, the EDI team established the EDI National Outreach Director (EDI NOD) volunteer position. Along with the National Outreach Director and Girls’ National Outreach Director, the EDI NOD will assist USA Ultimate’s Manager of Youth and Outreach Programs, Sarah Powers, with assessing our current outreach structure. This role was designed to have someone from the ultimate community who is passionate about creating more diversity in the sport provide guidance as well as an EDI lens on our outreach work moving forward, especially as we work to engage our local organizations (SBOs and affiliates) with this type of work. With that, we are excited to announce the appointment of Shanye Crawford to this role!
EDI Panel Discussion at 2020 Coach and Organizer Convention
On Saturday, January 25, the 2020 Coach and Organizer Convention will feature an EDI panel discussion entitled You Belong Here: Engaging Youth of Color in a Predominantly White Sport. Led by Erica Baruch, the panel will feature staff members from other national governing bodies (NGBs) of sport who are invested in EDI work with their respective organizations. The panel will focus primarily on how local organizations can best engage youth from underserved communities. Discussion topics will include successes/challenges other NGBs’ state and local organizations have had when outreaching to youth of color, ways local organizations can work with coaches to create an inclusive team environment and strategies for how an NGB can support its local organizations in this type of work.
USA Ultimate Sponsors Color of Ultimate at LA Throwback
On Saturday, January 25, the 2020 Coach and Organizer Convention will feature an EDI panel discussion entitled You Belong Here: Engaging Youth of Color in a Predominantly White Sport. Led by Erica Baruch, the panel will feature staff members from other national governing bodies (NGBs) of sport who are invested in EDI work with their respective organizations. The panel will focus primarily on how local organizations can best engage youth from underserved communities. Discussion topics will include successes/challenges other NGBs’ state and local organizations have had when outreaching to youth of color, ways local organizations can work with coaches to create an inclusive team environment and strategies for how an NGB can support its local organizations in this type of work.
Community Liaison Volunteers Meet in Denver
On Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019, Community Liaison Volunteers Ashleigh Buch and Kelsey Gibboney, along with ultimate community members Jack Verzuh and Mags Colvett, met with EDI Team co-chairs Julia Lee and Larry Melton to discuss topics impacting transgender and non-binary members of the ultimate community. Topics of discussion included furthering the conversation on gender pronouns, reevaluating the current USA Ultimate Transgender Inclusion Policy and reducing the burden on transgender and non-binary members of the community – especially youth players – in relation to anti-doping policies. The meeting ended with an open session discussing other topics brought up by the participants.
Lunch & Learn: Challenges and Successes to Diversity in Ultimate
During the last quarter of 2019, the EDI Team held two Lunch & Learns discussing challenges and successes in creating more diversity, both in sports as a whole and in ultimate in particular. During the first session, USA Ultimate staff discussed examples of challenges different sports have faced in terms of becoming more diverse, as well as success stories of sports programs that were able to overcome those challenges. In the next session, the group focused on challenges particular to ultimate, diving deeper into some of the barriers to entry in ultimate and analyzing articles written by Chris Lehmann on the intersection of ultimate and race.
In case you missed it, here is the last EDI update.
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