CLEO’s Anti-Racism Action Plan
CLEO works to help people who live on low incomes or experience other social disadvantages to understand their legal rights and how to exercise them. People who are racialized or Indigenous make up a disproportionate number of those who live on low income or experience social disadvantages. CLEO serves these communities as part of our core, everyday work.
We acknowledge that CLEO’s work has not, previously, had an intentional focus on serving or reaching people who are racialized or Indigenous. We are committed to addressing this shortcoming, recognizing the imperative of taking proactive, meaningful action in response to the long-standing and pervasive problem of systemic racism. CLEO has created and is now implementing a concrete action plan to improve our work with and for racialized and Indigenous communities in Ontario.
CLEO’s action plan has three parts that we commit to moving forward on over the next year. The first part of our plan focuses on how we can improve our resources and services by:
- Collecting data on the use of our resources and services by racialized and Indigenous people and the organizations that serve them
- Increasing our engagement with organizations that serve racialized communities and Indigenous people, reaching out to them ensure that their experience and perspectives are reflected in our resources, services, and content committees
- Integrating images, graphics, and descriptive examples in our content that depict or reflect the lived experience of people who are racialized and Indigenous
The second part of our plan is to provide training for CLEO staff to support them in learning about and reflecting on systemic racism and how it affects racialized and Indigenous people, and other issues.
The third part of our plan is to review CLEO’s organizational policies and practices to ensure that CLEO, as an organization, articulates and practices an intentional, proactive, equity-based approach.
We will monitor our activities against these goals, and revise or add to them as needed to support tangible progress.
This plan was adopted by the CLEO Board of Directors on September 30, 2020.