We aim to redistribute resources received from historically advantaged, well-resourced organizations to historically oppressed and marginalized groups, reshaping the knowledge landscape toward sustained equity. We publish open educational resources that share lessons learned from this work, enabling knowledge communities to foster the health and sustainability of their own collaborative networks.
A sustainable knowledge landscape is characterized by diverse communities having equitable access to:
1. The resources needed to create and share knowledge;
A “lack of social capital and networks, lack of relationships with funding sources, limited opportunities for advancement, and inadequate salaries” describe common conditions faced by marginalized identities in the U.S. nonprofit sector. Knowledge organizations, specifically, often struggle to operationalize equity.
2. The ability to control and benefit from the information they produce;
Extractive practices decenter the voices of marginalized communities from decision-making regarding curation and long-term access of the information they produce.
3. The knowledge, tools, and tactics needed to shift existing structures to support field level leadership of marginalized groups that are disproportionately impacted by current structures.
While a more diverse and equitable cultural record rationalizes funding support for large, multi stakeholder initiatives within the knowledge landscape, the common lack of diversity in the strategic leadership of these initiatives does not reflect this commitment.
Educopia designed and refined a Community Cultivation Framework that guides our organizational development practices. The framework serves as a throughline across Educopia’s work to provide ways for communities to understand, evaluate, and plan their own maturation.
We nurture communities that nurture their members.
Educopia recognizes that communities are made up of people, and that the community thrives when its individual members do. We encourage bridge-building and collaboration, and we cultivate a sense of nurturing and kindness across all of our initiatives.
We strive for a welcoming, safe, supportive environment for all.
Educopia works to create conditions for inclusivity in our community structures, spaces, and interactions – for example, through a focus on anti-racism, feminism, and accessibility. Our organizational structures, community governance models, and facilitation approaches are designed to create space for multiple perspectives.
We empower community members to take collective action.
Educopia believes communities should be member-owned and controlled, with the power to make their own strategic, operational, and financial decisions. We use facilitation and assessment techniques that center the needs of community members.
We strive for systemic change.
Educopia helps organizations across different domains work together to develop and to demand more open, accessible, and affordable systems to support knowledge production, collection, preservation, and dissemination.
We value open exchange of and access to knowledge.
Educopia contributes to the community of open knowledge removing barriers to information and advance open access initiatives. We aim to be transparent about the assumptions that underlie our research and community facilitation processes, and freely share our tools and frameworks so that others may build upon, improve, and benefit from them.
We value radical transparency coupled with reliability and responsiveness.
Educopia strives for transparency in our organizational processes, hiring practices, finances, and values. We take responsibility for our communities, their activities, and their outputs, and we support a culture of professional honesty and integrity.
