Kanohi ki te kanohi, tangata ki te tangata

Hurihia to aroaro ki te ra tukuna to atarangi kia taka ki muri i a koe.
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
Throughout my time at AUT I have been encouraged to share my experience in classroom practice and my ideas for developing a contemporary pedagogy supporting difference in the broadest sense. These opportunities don’t present themselves often and I ensure I engage fully when they arise.
‘Diverse Exchanges’ began as a single, half-day workshop convened by Professor Nigel Hemmington and supported by the School of Education. I was a forum panel member. Around 40 staff attended and it was one of those occasions that was truly inspirational. There were narratives recording Māori and Pacific student initiatives that started as self-help activities and grew to be seriously useful ways to bridge barriers of language, culture and jargon. There was a powerful sense in the room of ‘how can we make this happen in our school? 
With the support of Professor Hemmington, a group of cisgender, mostly straight members of the Faculty Diversity Committee convened to develop a plan to ensure that this momentum and enthusiasm wasn’t lost in the daily battle with timetables, workload and everydayitis.
This was an extraordinary group of influential, multicultural women with almost magical skillsets. Over a period of three months we sowed the seeds of a series of diversity workshops designed to draw attention to shortcomings in the services offered by the university and to offer solutions. 
‘Diverse Exchanges’ morphed into a twelve part series that I conceived, planned and helped-organise to cover a period of 18 months with a seminar, forum or workshop every six weeks. The focus included identifying the need to have a psychological testing service available to students at no – or low – cost so as to level the playing field for students struggling with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia and the other distinct learning challenges that staff confront every day in our practice. The idea was that we might, by bringing in resources, educate practitioners about what to look for, and how to engage, with the support services students need. 
We also felt there needed to be a place where university women, especially those from minority groups – migrants, Muslim women, transwomen, international exchange staff and students, lesbians – could meet and talk.
In project-related conversation with colleagues, it became clear that there was a universal belief the university wasn’t doing enough to promote disability access and, perhaps oddly, from this grew a desire to begin a kōrero around gender-neutral toilets, a battle we were party to initiating which the university readily adopted, and I’m proud to say that battle is largely won.
A number of our members were keen to engage with our Pacific communities and to begin a conversation around gender, religion and sexuality. We were fortunate to enlist the support of Professor Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop to assist with planning this activity.
I am fortunate to be a member of the Auckland Council Rainbow Communities Advisory Panel and, through this body, I discovered council has done great work on unconscious bias, a term that is being used more frequently in academic circles but without any structure being added to those discussions. I approached council staff and they were more than happy to come to us, share their outcomes, and facilitate our discussions. 
It was clear early in our deliberations that we wanted a student voice in our processes. The student union was approached and agreed to support this process.
‘The Business of Diversity’ was to be a vehicle for engagement with businesses and NGOs – Diversity Works, The Cookie Project, The Lucy Foundation and Co-Lab Coffee – for whom diversity, while a passion, is also a business. We realised that these organisations would have great processes and outcomes that staff and students could learn from. Auckland Council Disabilities Panel was our first port of call via chair Philip Patston and they agreed to support the project.
After consultation with The Mental Health Foundation (Moira Clunie), we agreed to take a close look at mental health and wellness through a te ao Māori lens and also from the perspective of the university. Audrey Hutcheson was our university go-to person and Letitia Taikato kindly offered to facilitate a te ao Māori kōrero.
The final programme – with descriptors – was as follows:
• ‘A Matter of Priorities?’ – Equity, Diversity and AUT, a high level forum focused on the strategic plan and how forum participants perceived the future;
• ‘How Can I Help You?’ – Resourcing Diversity & What Already Exists
• ‘Let’s talk About University Women’
• ‘Practical Access and Inclusion’ – Disability Awareness
• ‘Better Times Ahead’ – Mental Health & Today’s University
• ‘Modern Learning Challenges’ – Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia & Dyspraxia
• ‘Diversity, Gender & Equity in Nui Sila Pacific Communities’
• ‘Unpacking Unconscious Bias’
• ‘Paying Them Bills’ – The Business of Diversity’
• ‘The Hell of Always Being Right!’ – A Customer Perspective’; the student voice
• ‘Whāia te mātauranga hei oranga mō koutou’ – Seek after learning for the sake of your wellbeing – wellness and Ti Tiriti
• ‘A Jamboree of Flutterbys’ – A joining of resources and the wind up.
Sadly, before the series could be completed, the Faculty underwent a leadership change and it was determined that issues relating to diversity and equity would become the responsibility of individual staff members.
The process was an interesting and affirming one but, given the fact that some of it never eventuated, it might seem odd to have this included in this document. My reason for doing so is to highlight the outreach we achieved – our planning group came from all over the university, covered a wide range of ethnicities, skillsets and professional roles, and the excitement that was generated was palpable. Perhaps most impressive was the collaboration among colleagues, all of whom wanted a better, more cohesive workplace with benefits across our broad staff/student demographic. 
We produced graphic material that was widely circulated and found funding to support airfares, accommodation and catering for the entire programme. The issues have not gone away. Staff, colleagues and past attendees who I speak to are sad seminars that weren’t completed ended up ‘on the cutting room floor’, because they see the challenges not going away and feel largely unsupported in dealing with them. 
As a group we were acutely aware that what we planned barely scratched the surface of what could be achieved in the field of equity, equality and diversity – but it was a start. We had ideas for a second series. It still seems important to face these issues kanohi ki te kanohi, tangata ki te tangata, eye to eye, face to face, if we are to honour the AUT values of aroha, tika and pono.