Forum Insights – Attracting Residents & Building Community Resiliency through Cultivating Diversity
Recently the Sustainable Community Development Network (SCDN), facilitated by Sustainable Pittsburgh, and the Local Government Academy (LGA) organized an evening leadership forum for local elected officials and community leaders to discuss how cultivating diversity in the workplace and community will strengthen development and foster resiliency.
The enlightening and vibrant discussion was led by experts in workforce diversity, gender equity, employment law, gerontology, economic development, and immigration policy.
Several salient points resonated with Forum participants:
- Create a broad definition of diversity for your organization and set specific goals for how you will foster it.
- Actively develop your personnel recruitment network by regularly including people that are outside of your everyday range of personal contact. Feeling uncomfortable is common when attempting this.
- Continually foster collaboration with those in and new to your network by specifically inviting them to join you on efforts and vice versa.
- Diversity and inclusivity should not be something that exists in a vacuum, it must be a part of all policies and procedures.
A sincere thank you to all of the speakers, the City of Duquesne for hosting the Forum, and everyone who attended.