The Center for Rural Engagement staff strives to ensure just and equitable engagement and impact with all partners.
We acknowledge that past and present decisions have disproportionately placed barriers to health, prosperity, and vitality in front of some Indiana residents. Before American colonization, thriving Indigenous communities peopled and cared for the land that is now the State of Indiana. Since that time, marginalized populations have survived broken treaties, state-sanctioned violence, and exploitation. Additionally, we acknowledge that the same communities we are proud to belong to and engage with today, on and off campus, still reflect legacies of political and cultural discrimination that deliberately made them inhospitable to these populations. Alongside this history of harm, however, we find inspiration and hope in the countless Hoosiers who envision and work towards a state where health, prosperity, and vitality are equally accessible to everyone.
With this awareness of the past and present, the center takes responsibility for its role in co-creating the future with our partners.
The center commits to:
- Publicly sharing this explicit commitment to justice and equity as an invitation for partnership and to encourage accountability.
- Evaluating our work and operations in alignment with this commitment and our values of community, collaboration, creativity, transformation, and integrity.
- Continuously improving the accessibility of our services and products along dimensions that include language proficiency, education level, immigration status, and ability.
- Building and prioritizing relationships and networks with people on and off campus who have marginalized identities and statuses.
- Deepening our understanding of our organizational and individual relationships with power and privilege through regular professional development.
Through this commitment, we intend to center the needs and experiences of marginalized groups, including people who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color; lack documentation; have low-English proficiency; identify as LGBTQ+; are unhoused; are affected by incarceration; are with disabilities; and are impoverished. Finally, in recognizing that systems of oppression are intersectional, we will consider each person's unique identities and experiences with care.