SFU Hosts First Equity Forum for the SFU Community

This carefully co-designed and facilitated dialogue forum drew more than 70 participants with 50 in person and 24 joining online. Storytellers from the university who work at the intersection of equity and planetary health shared their stories with small groups of participants. Participants were asked to listen and share takeaways through one of eight lenses: gifts, worldviews, failure, breakthroughs, power, motivations, courage or obstacles. The full group then discussed key learnings and insights that could influence action and thinking to address planetary health challenges. This storytelling approach, known as Collective Story Harvesting, encouraged deeper learning and sharing of insights, innovations and epiphanies that exist beneath the surface.

"There are many of us at SFU who feel similarly and are striving to bridge culture and knowledge gaps. Doing this work as an SFU community makes our individual goals into shared goals. Dismantling silos towards the greater goal of climate justice is made possible with our collective voice, which is powerful, engaged, thoughtful, informed and largely decolonial." - Forum Participant 

“My honest biggest takeaway is we need more time together! It felt like we were just getting started as we ended. I wanted more time to learn from colleagues' stories and the insights from story listeners as well. The story harvesting method is SO rich, but it needs more time and spaciousness to be fully effective.” - Forum Participant 

The event was co-designed and hosted by the Centre for Dialogue, the EDI Community of Practice, SFU Sustainability and the Planetary Health Research Group. The co-design and partnership-centered approach to event planning was part of its success. This approach modeled ways of being that we need to advance work at the intersection of equity and planetary health. 

The Equity Forum happens twice a year, and the Equity Community of Practice will be reconvening their regular meetings in the fall.