Ten Steps to Build an Inclusive Future for the Geo for Good Community
Editor’s note: Today’s post was co-authored by representatives from Women+ in Geospatial, Ladies of Landsat and Google Earth Outreach:
- Sabrina Szeto, Geospatial Consultant and Director of Women+ in Geospatial
- Morgan Crowley, Forest Fire Research Scientist, Natural Resources Canada
- Raleigh Seamster, Senior Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach
What does an inclusive future mean to you, and what actions can we take as individuals and as a community to make it a reality?
Google Earth Outreach joined forces with the organizations Women+ in Geospatial and Ladies of Landsat to put together a panel at the 2022 Geo for Good Summit to answer this question. Below, we summarize our main takeaways from this conversation and follow-up Q&A in ten action items for the Geo for Good community.
Prioritize generosity and make a human connection. Focus on what you can give, share and bring to each other rather than what you can get from others in the community to better yourself. Get to know someone beyond their title or role. Don’t be extractive and avoid one-sided relationships. Inside the community, we want to learn each other’s stories and avoid superficial connections that are based solely on someone’s affiliation or position.
Be thoughtful in your curiosity about others. Get to know each other thoughtfully and respectfully. Avoid tokenizing community members based on their identities. Everyone is a unique individual whose experiences should not be generalized to represent an entire community or group.
Build partnerships. Address power imbalances between technologists, solutions providers, scientists and the communities they are working in by forming collaborative relationships. For example, audience member Clare Averill suggested including “participatory scenario narratives in planning processes” and Rebecca Moore suggested valuing local knowledge and expertise. As Nikki Tulley notes, one can do “outreach to communities understanding that it will take time to build relationships. [It is] highly valuable in building trust to have people more involved.”
Make space for those who are not at the table. Whether navigating different languages, barriers in digital literacy or internet access, people with physical, sight, hearing or other disabilities, gender barriers, social status, age groups or other identity-based groups. As a woman CEO, Genevieve Patenaude noted that “societies are not equal [in] how we deal with parenthood.” Remember that barriers and challenges are often unique to the groups that are experiencing them. Time, caregiving responsibilities, resources and bandwidth can be barriers. Be attuned to each other’s circumstances.
Co-develop solutions. Break the “if we build it, they will come” mentality. The best ideas are co-developed with or led by communities who need these solutions the most. Be sure to recognize these differences and learn from the communities directly when you are co-developing solutions.
Create opportunities for others. For example, as Abena Boatemaa Asare-Ansah suggests, for early career people and fresh graduates from the under-represented groups, “one could offer them the necessary training and give them room to grow and develop their geospatial skills. You’ll be amazed at what they will do!” Financial support is also appreciated to enable people to afford attending conferences and other professional development opportunities.
Become a mentor. Nikki Tulley encourages individuals to “take on mentoring roles to allow people to feel comfortable to come and talk to you and share their concerns about inclusion.” Mentorship has the power to retain our community members as they navigate their own careers, as we see with the success of mentorship programs like that from Women+ in Geospatial.
Build things you can share with others. As Meenakshi Kushwaha describes, “We have developed open source tools for air quality analysis, prioritizing code commenting and documentation to make these tools as accessible as possible.” Embody this open-access mandate by making your work as accessible as is possible.
Remember the past. Throughout the pandemic, we have learned how we can stay in touch in our community through hybrid events, on-demand recordings and online forums. This has made our community even more accessible, and so we should remember these lessons as we go into the future.
Bring what you have learned from the Geo for Good community into the outside world. Take inspiration from the Community Guidelines that are widely shared and enforced to create your own safe space. Support community-led research and ideas. Share a platform and increase visibility for lesser-heard voices. The new Google Developer Expert program in Earth Engine recognizes those who go the extra mile in their contributions to the community. And, extensive relationship building has led to robust trust within our community at every step.
What do you think? What other actions should we be taking as a community? Leave your ideas as comments below this article to continue the conversation! In addition, you are welcome to watch the on-demand recording of the panel on YouTube.
