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Nonprofit/Advocacy Jargon and Plain-Language Equivalents

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Sometimes nonprofit organisations and advocacy groups use language that’s hard to understand. This even happens when organisations work with people who have a hard time understanding the kinds of words they use. What do capacity-building and stakeholders mean? This is a list of words that these groups sometimes use. I’ve explained what these things mean in simple words. I will be updating this list every so often, so make sure to check back.

Best practices

Doing things that work. That’s what it’s supposed to mean, anyway.

Capacity-building

Teaching, training, education or mentoring. Sometimes “capacity-building” can also mean hiring more people in an organisation so they can get more done. Just say what you mean: teaching, hiring, and mentoring are much clearer than “capacity-building.”

Development

When organisations talk about development, they often mean raising money. When organisations raise money, they can hire more people and get new supplies. That way, they can help more people.

Dissemination

Sharing information with people or organisations.

Engagement

Getting people’s attention.

Interventions

Ways to help people. Sometimes these interventions really do help, but some can hurt. It’s important to listen to the people you’re trying to help.

Knowledge transfer

Teaching, training, or education.

Knowledge-translation activities

Making things easier for people to understand. Some examples of knowledge translation include plain-language versions of articles, webinars, videos, and infographics.

Stakeholders

People who care about what you’re doing, or vampire hunters. Stakeholder engagement just means talking to people who care about your project, or getting them interested in what you’re doing.

Strategic planning

Long-term planning.

Technical assistance

Answering people’s questions to help them run their organisations. Not to be confused with tech support. You won’t be able to call Microsoft Technical Assistance to fix MS Word.

The problems with authoritarians (plain-language article)

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(Content warning: I talk about some hurtful things in this article, like killing and discrimination.)

If you’ve read the news over the past few years, you may have heard about authoritarianism and wondered what it is. Authoritarianism is the idea that having control is more important than meeting people’s needs, telling the truth or being fair. Authoritarianism is dangerous because it thinks that letting some people have power is more important than caring for other people. Everyone should have the power to make a difference, not just a few people. Here are some facts about authoritarianism and why it’s bad.

  1. Authoritarianism has been a problem throughout history. Historical authoritarian leaders include Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Nicolae Ceaușescu and Idi Amin. Some modern leaders like Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, Bashar al-Assad and Rodrigo Duterte have also acted in authoritarian ways or have said they like authoritarian thinking.
  2. Authoritarians say things are right just because somebody says so. That somebody can be God, the government, their parents or themselves. Saying ‘Because I said so!’ is not proof. Anybody can say things, and sometimes those things can be wrong. For example, some people believe that God made the universe and everything in it less than ten thousand years ago. That’s wrong. Scientists have found rocks, fossils and other items that are millions of years old. If you want to say that something is a fact, you should prove it. You can prove things with research, stories and other kinds of evidence.
  3. Authoritarians think that it’s OK to treat people unfairly because that’s just the way things are. They don’t think that problems like racism or sexism matter, because it’s more important to have control than it is to be fair. This is dangerous. Real people are hurt by racism, sexism and other kinds of mistreatment. The world isn’t fair, but we can still make it fairer.
  4. Authoritarians also think that it is possible to know everything about reality. This isn’t true. We can’t know everything because the universe is always changing. Living things like plants and animals change over time to adapt to their environment. We are constantly learning new things about the universe and how it works. That’s what science is about. That’s also what being human is about. Being an intelligent species means that we can learn about the world around us and talk about what we’ve learned. We can’t know everything, but we can try to know as much as we can.
  5. Authoritarians think they have all the answers to everyone’s questions. People may have some answers, but nobody has all the answers.
  6. Some authoritarians think that you should do what they say, not what they do. This is because they think having control is more important than being fair or kind. Some politicians say that being gay hurts families, but these same politicians will cheat on their partners.
  7. Authoritarians think that it is OK to punish people for not agreeing with them. In the Soviet Union, Stalin killed people or sent them to jail because they didn’t agree with him or the government. Black Americans in states with Jim Crow laws could be hurt or killed because they spoke up against their states’ laws. (Jim Crow is a nickname for laws passed in the United States that banned black people from being in the same areas as white people. Keeping people separate like this is called segregation.) Martin Luther King was killed by someone who thought Jim Crow laws were good.
  8. Authoritarians don’t believe in civil rights. Many of them think that certain people deserve to be treated badly. Hitler killed millions of Jews and Roma because he didn’t think they were real people who deserved to live. Some people in the United States want to stop Black, Native and Latino people from voting. There are people who think that women should not have the right to vote or have jobs because they think men are smarter than women.

Plain-language philosophy: Epistemic injustice

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This post is part of a series of posts in which I’ll attempt to translate philosophical ideas into understandable language to reach a wider audience. I firmly believe that big ideas are, or should be, open to everyone.

Everyone can learn things about themselves. They also have the right to learn more things in a way that works for them. Unfortunately, some people think that because of who some people are, they either can’t know themselves well or don’t have the right to learn new things about themselves or the world around them. In 2007, Miranda Fricker wrote a book, Epistemic Injustice, about how people ignore others’ knowledge and prevent them from getting more knowledge easily. Epistemic is a fancy word referring to how we know things, how we learn, and how we see others’ knowledge. Epistemic injustice means that people don’t respect your knowledge because of who you are. It also means that because of who you are, people don’t give you the tools for you to gather knowledge for yourself. This happens to people who experience discrimination or have less power in society, like women, people of colour, people with disabilities, immigrants and LGBTQ people.

Here are some examples of how people encounter epistemic injustice:

  • Students with disabilities can deal with epistemic injustice because they are not given a good education that helps them learn more about the world in ways they can understand. At school, people learn important strategies for communicating with other people, gathering learning, and communicating that knowledge. When people don’t learn those skills, it is harder to talk about what you are going through and what you need. Some people think wrongly that people with disabilities can’t use these tools effectively.
  • Some people may not take women’s complaints about sexual abuse or harassment seriously. This means that the people who abused or harassed them won’t get caught and will keep hurting the women who complained. Some people think that women don’t know when they’re being mistreated and that they’re overreacting when they are. This is unfair because women can tell when they are being treated badly and have the right to have their boundaries respected.
  • Poor people often go to schools that don’t get much money. Because there isn’t enough money to pay teachers or get good textbooks, students may not learn as much. They won’t have the tools to explain their experiences as well as people with better educations.
  • Doctors may not take people of colour seriously when they tell doctors about their problems, like pain or illness. This can be very dangerous because not treating people’s pain or illnesses can kill them or put them in danger. These doctors think that people of colour cannot know how they are feeling, but white people can. This is racist. People of colour can know themselves just as well as white people can.

The problem with epistemic injustice is that it makes it more difficult for people to communicate and advocate for their rights. When you’re not being listened to or don’t have ways to talk about what you need, it’s hard to have those needs met. This means that you may not have the healthcare, education, housing, relationships, laws and policies, or services you deserve. As activists, we should work to make sure that people are listened to so we can get what we need. Everyone deserves to be included in the community, and part of that means listening to them and giving them the tools to talk about what they need to be included.

References

Fricker, M (2007). Epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fast learners are not better than other people

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(CW: ableist slurs.)

It is not nice to say that fast learners are better than other people. That is because it is mean to people who learn more slowly. It is not bad to learn slowly. It is not bad to be a fast learner either. Everyone can learn something. We just need different ways to learn things. That is OK.

But some people treat fast learners like they are better than other people. That is not nice. I am a fast learner. I am not better than somebody who learns more slowly than I do. I just have different learning needs.

Some people call fast learners gifted. There are many problems with that. Gifted is not a good word. Calling fast learners gifted is not fair. That is because it feels like people who learn slowly are not as good. People also say fast learners are intelligent. Intelligent comes from a Latin word meaning reading between. That means that we see patterns quickly. Other words people use for fast learners are smart, sharp, bright or clever. People think they are nice words. Sometimes they give a message that slower learners are not worth as much. Some people use these words to say it’s better to learn fast. This is unfair.

Some people learn more slowly than others. They can learn, but it takes more time for them to pick things up. That is OK. They are people and everyone is able to learn something. They just need more time. People say that slow learners have intellectual disabilities. This just means they take longer to learn. Sometimes people use mean words about slow learners. Some of these unkind words include retarded, idiot, stupid and dumb. We should not call slower learners these words. These words are hurtful. 

I think everyone deserves to learn things in their own time. I think that people can be good or bad no matter how they learn. We are all people. We should not judge people by how fast they learn.

Include all of us!

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As a disability activist, I want to make sure that disability policy includes all of us. Here are some ways that we can include more people. This isn’t everything we can do, but we can start here.

Listen to disabled people of colour. People who have to deal with racism are sometimes going to encounter different problems from what white people may have to deal with. I’m both black and autistic. I worry about being targeted for my race when I go into a store or encounter the police. I also worry about these issues because of my disability. Autism means that my body language may be different from non-autistic people’s. This means that I may be seen as ‘suspicious’ even if I’m just minding my own business. You can take the issues caused by racism and add them to the ones caused by prejudice against autistic people.

Recognise the struggles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning people with disabilities. Some people don’t take us seriously. They think that we can’t know who we’re attracted to, or what our own gender is. But this isn’t fair. People know themselves best and we should remember that. We have the right to be in relationships. We have the right to be seen as our own gender. Some of us are men. Some of us are women. Some of us are neither. Some of us are both. You can have a disability and be LGBTQ+.

Remember to support women with disabilities. Disabled women deal with sexism and prejudice against disabled people. Even women without disabilities are taken less seriously sometimes. This is even worse if a woman has a disability. Women are people. People have rights and they deserve a voice.

Listen to people with intellectual disabilities. Some people think that they can’t understand laws and other policies that will support or hurt them because of their disability. This isn’t true. There are ways to make information easy to understand for people with intellectual disabilities. You can write easy-read documents to teach people about candidates and bills. You can make sure your documents are easy to read for as many people as possible. We need to be fair and make sure that everyone can participate in disability policy.

Include people who have problems with reading. People can have problems with reading for different reasons. They may have an intellectual disability. They may have a learning disability. Or they may not speak your native language well. You can write things in a simple way that most people can understand. You can use different online tools to make sure your writing is easy to understand. You can also explain policy in other ways. There are people who can’t read at all. This doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be included. You can use pictures and videos. You can also explain things to people by talking or signing to them. If they speak or read a different language you can translate.

True inclusion means including all of us, not just some of us.