As more and more of the world starts to wake up to the white supremacist narrative that has unfairly been the norm for far too long, Animal Experience International knows we have a part to play. For far too long companies like ours have been uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to speak out against the white dominance norms and white savior narrative that runs deep in the travel industry.
From the very start AEI has committed to only partnering with local groups around the world. Groups that have local leadership, work with local professionals, and local community support. But that is not enough. Passive non-racist commitments are not enough now and will not be enough in the future. We commit to an active anti-racist workplace.
The travel industry has a long and shameful history of white privilege and white supremacy. Narratives have been taught to travelers that are not based in fact, only in bias and racism. The travel industry was built on a foundation of cruelty, inequity, exclusion and often violence. This is not the industry we want to be part of, but its shameful history still shows in the implicit bias and racial inequities of travelers, operators, and suppliers.
Some changes will happen overnight but hear us when we say we are committed to a full top to bottom change of the system. Systemic racism must be stopped because we are only free when ALL of us are free. We will continue to learn, to ask, to be humble and to be grateful to those who came before us, those who teach us and those who are willing to guide us towards a more equitable world, in this industry and all others.
We commit to engaging mindfully and purposefully with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) communities more than we ever have and we commit to making changes as often as it takes to get it right.
We commit to the following actions:
We understand that you can’t be what you can’t see. We commit to engaging more with BIPOC communities through all our social media campaigns. Reaching out to learn more about how to partner, support and amplify those who are already doing this important work.
We commit to the addition of an anti-racism, diversity, and inclusion agreement with all our placement partners. If our placement partners do not have such documents in place we commit to offering help when needed. It’s not about calling out, it’s about calling in.
We commit to doing the work. Reading more books, attending more webinars, taking part in more diversity, equity and inclusion workshops and training sessions. We also commit to sharing these resources, not to virtue signal but to help amplify the voices who have been suppressed for too long.
We will address and adjust the unfair and harmful white privilege narratives that can exist when a company is run by two white women. We commit to hiring in the BIPOC community so our messages can be more diverse and equitable. We commit to diversity on all our teams, including our internships, and social media partners.
We will add diversity, inclusion, equity, and anti-racism messages to all our manuals and training materials. This will include self-evaluations, history of violence against the BIPOC community in travel, white privilege, systemic racism and of course allyship. This will not all be written by AEI, we will work with qualified professionals to develop these resources.
This cannot happen overnight, and this cannot be achieved by us in isolation. If you want to be involved in any of the above initiatives, please contact us, we would be delighted to take this journey with you. We thought we were doing enough and clearly that was not the case. We are sorry. We will do better and we will do better by including everyone equally.
Black Lives Matter.
