Partnership

Marwa Abayed

Sur García

Associate, Team Member Experience
Tunis, Tunisia

Musician & illustrator
Santa Marta, Colombia

Decolonizing the workplace

Farah and I collaborated to create a short story that focuses on storytelling through video. Initially, we began with a broader idea of using a storyboard, but after brainstorming together, we decided that a video format would be more dynamic and engaging. The video incorporates various clips and visuals, with English narration and French subtitles to emphasize language accessibility. For anyone approaching this piece, I would suggest viewing it as an example of how media and language access can be blended to create a narrative. The output is not perfect and the focus should be more about how we brought different pieces together to tell a story.

The piece that Sur created out of the conversations we had, attempts to portray the transition from perfectionism and entrenchment, to deconstructing the colonial power dynamics, understanding the needs in the space, building safety, enabling fluidity, fostering creativity, and a sprinkle of joy whenever possible.

We are embracing our organizational strategy and moving forward with our efforts to understand the historiography of the current workspace structures, to unpack our double consciousness and our bias, to allow ‘othered’ selves in our workspace to surface, create, and be; and to ultimately forge functional and effective systems that make this possible and sustainable.

Attempting to decolonize a multicultural workspace is as complex and layered as attempting to fully understand all aspects of human behavior. This work will remain a continuous effort. It is internal and specific to organizations, but is most likely hollow and isolated if not paired with organizational goals and external impact in the work we do as NGOs in communities.