GUIDING VALUES FOR UNPAUSING EDUCATIONAL ALLIANCE

Value 1: Safety
Keeping each other safe and healthy.

• Creating safe and healthy environments and following the mandates of local, state, and federal authorities.
• Backing up all decisions with guidelines that are grounded by science and which are communicated clearly using evidence-based protocol
• Defining agency-wide and program-specific best practices.

Value 2: Equity, Diversity and Interdependence 
Maintaining our values of equity and diversity are especially important as marginalized communities have become more vulnerable. This must inform our communications strategies, programming, and operations.

• Commitment to making communications accessible through translation, and by using multiple channels (WeChat, email, text, websites).
• Strength-based, culturally relevant, and trauma-informed communications.
• Ensuring a diverse range of community members are included in decision-making processes where possible.
• Commitment to providing staff with training, compassion and emotional support as they navigate this new normal.

Value 3: High-Quality, Reliable and Relationship-driven Programs
Continue our legacy of Excellence, Reliability, and Prioritizing People and Relationships

• Commitment by staff to offer excellence in programming even though we may feel obstructed or anxious or face limited resources.
• Commitment to vulnerable populations by continuing to offer digital programs to those who cannot reach us in person.
• Relational and personal programs with individualized reach-out and supports.
• Reliability, availability, predictability, and endurance.

Value 4: Responsibility to Health of EA
Making decisions based on the overall fiscal, legal, reputational needs of our Agency.

• Commitment by all staff to seeing ourselves as representatives of EA. Safety will need to be visible. Best practices will be required and need to be taken seriously and done consistently.
• Modeling cleanliness, order, compliance, health while balancing warmth, generosity, flexibility, and personalization.
• Determining our Agency’s tipping point for deciding to close sites in spite of the financial implications or conflicting information from city and state agencies. Need for vigilance and agility.

Value 5: Continuing our legacy as a light in our communities.

• Staff are visible in the community and need to consider health and safety best practices at all times.
• Model and communicate optimism about the strength of our neighborhood and communities.
• Model responsiveness to our community by prioritizing feedback loops that enable us to measure success.
• Flexibility, agility, consistency. We need to be nimble and that may mean we cannot make the same decisions for programs across the board.

Value 6: Transparency that empowers everyone.

• Creating a transparent methodology for how we navigate situations when the above values seem to be in conflict with each other.
• Scenario planning that enables staff to make informed decisions in a timely way.