Our Mission
In a perfect world, our organization would not exist. In a perfect world, neurodiversity is the norm and we all advocate, accommodate, and support each other so that we can all thrive and navigate the world authentically together. The Neurodivergent Equity Coalition aims to encourage professionals, spaces, and other organizations throughout the country to become more neurodivergent-friendly and accommodating by promoting these businesses and organizations in our centralized database, as well as making the certification process and criteria for professionals transparent. Combined with our resources, research, and policy proposals, both from our own experts and our strategic partnerships, we aim to increase visibility to neurodiversity and increase neurodivergent equity and rights throughout the country to push us towards a perfect world.
Our Purpose
The Neurodivergent Equity Coalition aims to work with various local neurodivergent organizations throughout the country to build a centralized, certified list of professionals who are neurodivergent-affirming and -friendly, accommodating for sensory and ability needs, and most of all, kind and empathetic. This certification and its criteria will be an ongoing effort between us and local neurodivergent organizations and will be refined and updated as needed to ensure we accurately and inclusively represent the neurodivergent population to the best of our ability. As a central source of certified professionals, the Neurodivergent Equity Coalition also aims to use its status to provide resources, research, and policy proposals by not only employing its own experts but also strategically partnering with other experts to promote their projects as well as engage in fruitful collaborations.
Values
- Psychological Safety
- The culture and environment of our organization is carefully cultivated so that everyone feels safe, comfortable, and empowered to bring forth all ideas and feedback. We engage with each other with respect, listen, and work to do better. We embrace vulnerability and admit to our mistakes, at every level of the organization. Everyone's voice matters, and we listen to all voices equally.
- Authentic Connection
- The organization provides the accommodation and support needed for all of us to engage daily with each other as our authentic selves. We support each other, give each other grace, and play to our strengths to push our work and ourselves farther together than we could alone. We make time to be human, express our feelings, and share our moments of joy.
- Radical Agency
- Everyone in the organization has the tools and access they need to do their best work. We encourage cross-team collaborations and proposals. We encourage experimentation, questioning the work, and rapid prototyping. Everyone at the organization has the access to share feedback and propose new lines of work to the executive team.
- Kindness and Empathy
- We lead every interaction, internally and externally, with kindness and empathy. We acknowledge different perspectives and listen with an open mind. Everyone we interact with leaves the interaction feeling respected, seen, and heard.
- Excellence in Execution
- We strive to give our best work and collectively utilize our strengths in pursuit of excellence. As representatives of the neurodivergent community, we aim to represent the community to the best of our ability. Our work is never perfect and we continue to iterate and refine in pursuit of excellence, while providing ample time for us to rest and recuperate to ensure our pursuit of excellence is sustainable.
The Future
Scaling for equity, inclusion, and justice
The first priority of the organization is building the Directory and fostering collaborative relationships with local neurodivergent organizations throughout the state and country. Beyond this, when we are able to scale, we want to provide resources, tools, conduct research, and draft policy proposals by not only employing our own experts but also strategically partnering with other experts to promote their projects as well as engage in fruitful collaborations.
We'd also like to take advantage of our existing relationships with local neurodivergent organizations to create guidelines and resources for bootstrapping new neurodivergent organizations in communities that don't have them yet, and supplying our own team of community organizers to help with this process.