— Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at MANIFEST 🏳️‍🌈

— Statement

Our Diversity and Inclusion statement is a public declaration of our commitment to welcome team members, clients, partners, collaborators, suppliers, and any other individuals who — regardless of their background — help us become more effective in reaching our goals.

For us, Diversity and Inclusion go hand-in-hand. This means we go beyond simply recognising superficial differences. Our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion spans across race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and socio-economic background, it is a deliberate and constant exercise that involves:

• A deep and ever-growing awareness of our own world views and the forces that have shaped them.
• The practice of mutual respect for experiences and ways of seeing the world that are different from our own.
• Gaining knowledge of cultural practices, histories and world views from a broad range of diverse groups, and developing skills for communication and interaction across these groups.
• A recognition that personal, cultural, historical and institutionalised discrimination creates and sustains advantages and privileges for some groups while creating and sustaining disadvantages for others.
• Developing and executing creative work that calls out, challenges, and redresses imbalances and deficiencies in the representation and participation of marginalised groups.

Our approach to Diversity and Inclusion is rooted in the concept of ‘Cultural Competence’, which is the ability to understand, accept, respect, lead, work with, and advocate for people from backgrounds and cultures different from oneself. We measure our cultural competence by the extent to which we create and maintain an environment where everyone can be their full selves and bring their ways of seeing the world to bear in the creative work they produce. We recognise that developing cultural competence is an ongoing process that starts with the recognition of the need and value of diversity, then progresses to implementation of policies and practices, and continues with further refinement and understanding of the benefits of inclusive practices. We don’t pretend there are quick fixes to diversity and inclusion, nor do we assume we won’t stumble along the way, but we promise we will always do the necessary work of educating ourselves, our clients, our suppliers and ultimately our communities with honesty and compassion. We are a global business, and we acknowledge that differences in history, demography, law, culture and custom in regions we operate in will play a role in our target setting, data gathering, and analysis. We will hold ourselves and all our partners accountable and never compromise on our principles. We will never relent in the pursuit of an equitable society, free from bias and discrimination of any sort.