Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at HUB Cycling: Fall Update

Earlier this year, we shared our commitment to standing up and speaking out against racism and injustice in all forms. Here is our semi-annual update on our diversity, equity & inclusion efforts.

Our team continues to proactively use a diversity & equity lens, be it the images we use or the audiences we try to engage with. We now share our content in Farsi, create videos in Punjabi to showcase and promote new infrastructure, design event posters and social media content in French, Punjabi, Farsi, Hindi and Mandarin, organize webinars to promote adaptive cycling to help reduce barriers to people with mobility challenges. We have media partnerships with Sing Tao, The Filipino Post, The South Asian Post and Asian Pacific Post, to reach audiences from different cultural and language backgrounds.

We continue to connect people in Metro Vancouver via our Bike Match program so that people who have an extra bicycle can donate it to people who need one. Want to donate a bike? Fill out the form here.

One of the legacies of colonialism is our Christian-centric list of statutory holidays in B.C. We get Christmas off work, but not Diwali. Good Friday but not Vaisakhi, Eid, or Passover. In BC, Victoria Day, celebrating a long-dead British monarch, is worthy of a holiday but not National Day for Truth and Reconciliation or Lunar New Year.

This year, HUB Cycling decided to shake up this status quo to demonstrate that we as an organization respect all faiths, religions, and backgrounds. Instead of giving staff four paid days off during Christmas (which used to be the norm), HUB Cycling now gives staff the flexibility to take five paid days off any time during the year to celebrate their festivals and traditions. As an organization, this gives us the opportunity to understand people from various cultures, as is the case in our extended community, by embracing differences in people through showing respect and valuing others. 

Photo credit: UBC/Paul Joseph.

HUB Cycling gave staff paid time off on the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30th. We invited staff to reflect on the harmful impacts of the Residential School System, recognize the strength and resilience of Indigenous Peoples in the face of colonial oppression and commit to advancing the Reconciliation process. 

As part of HUB Cycling's commitment to reconciliation, we as an organization undertook decolonization training, hosted by a local First Nations-led organization, Hummingbirds Rising, to help our team learn more about Indigenous history and their current reality.

This spring we initiated a new service relationship with Red Fox Healthy Living Society, collaboratively delivering a new Indigenous Youth Community Asset Mapping by Bike Program. This Vancouver Greenest City funded program is engaging Indigenous teen Youth Leaders to teach Indigenous pre-teens how to map out the places and services they want to access in their community, and how to get there safely and happily by bike. We are pleased to announce that HUB Cycling has recently been awarded federal Healthy Communities funding to expand this model to Indigenous and racialized youth in North Vancouver, New Westminster, and Surrey in Spring 2022.

In August, we re-launched the Newcomer Bike Mentorship Program in collaboration with the Immigrant Services Society of BC (ISSofBC).  Thanks to funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada, HUB Cycling is working with ISSofBC staff to provide recently arrived immigrants and refugees with city cycling orientation and instruction, along with their own bicycle.  They are then matched for three months to spend time with skilled and knowledgeable mentor volunteers to become familiar with local city cycling.  Through their mentor matching, newcomers will become oriented to Vancouver or Surrey cycling routes, rules, and culture, while having fun exploring urban spaces by bike together.

Our Active Transportation Planning team is just finalizing the assembly of funding, partners, and academic collaborators for our new Cycling Equity and Older Buildings research project. This will be a practical analysis of the impacts of the design of older buildings in Metro Vancouver from different eras on accessibility to cycling for people living and working in Metro Vancouver, and recommendations for all stakeholders about how older buildings can be made more accessible for cycling.  Given the diversity of the races, languages, income levels, abilities, and gender identities of people who live in older buildings in this region, this HUB Cycling project has as a core goal of lowering inequities of access to cycling for our diverse population. 

HUB Cycling is partnering with cycling organizations across the country to develop a National Cycling Equity Framework. The JoyRide project is led by Jay Pitter, an award-winning placemaker and Planner-In-Residence at the University of Waterloo's School of Planning. This professional development process is aimed to help cycling advocacy organizations across the country to help reduce inequities in public and transportation spaces.

We acknowledge the overwhelming support and encouragement we have received so far, and hope that you will join us to take action against racism and other injustices. Continue to follow our journey on our diversity, equity & inclusion page. 

To share feedback, contact us at diversity@bikehub.ca.

Photo credit: UBC/Paul Joseph.
Reconciliation Pole, is a 55-foot red cedar pole carved by 7idansuu (Edenshaw), James Hart, Haida Hereditary Chief and Master Carver, which was raised according to Haida tradition at the south end of UBC campus. Photo album from Reconciliation Pole installation is available here.