Equity Statement

The YWCA Central Massachusetts is committed to ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion in line with our mission of eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all.

Our organization welcomes and supports people of all gender identities, races, sexual orientations, abilities, and economic statuses. We believe that everyone has inherent and equal value, deserves to be treated with dignity, and should live free of discrimination. We envision building and supporting an inclusive community where people of different ages, races, ethnicities, national origins, cultural backgrounds, faiths, gender expressions, gender identities, ideologies, and economic status have equitable opportunities and benefit from equitable systems that support justice so that they can achieve their full potential with dignity.

Our services are guided by our core values, which include our commitment to race and gender equity, collaboration, and a people-centered community. As such, our work promotes racial and gender equity while dismantling systemic barriers and challenges that inhibit prosperity, human dignity, equal justice, and the opportunity to thrive. Our efforts to create racial justice and women’s empowerment encourage investments in women and their families, tackling health disparities, creating pathways for self-determination for marginalized groups, and strengthening our investment in diversity in our community’s decision-making spaces to build a stronger future for everyone.

As an organization, employer, advocate, and community partner, we are committed to ongoing assessment and improvement of our efforts to address inequity within our organizational culture, services, policies, practices, decision-making processes, and composition. We endeavor to foster a safe, respectful, and supportive atmosphere so everyone can feel comfortable.

We see our diverse workforce as a source of strength and are committed to preserving it and ensuring that it accurately reflects the community we serve. We recognize the difficulties of working across differences and make a concerted effort to increase our understanding of the life experiences, histories, cultures, customs, and issues faced by people in our organization and community. We believe cultivating understanding promotes our organizational and service delivery’s commitment to equity.