Many organizations continue to operate within colonial frameworks that reinforce power imbalances, marginalize Global South voices, and uphold Global North dominance in decision-making, funding, and narratives. Drip by Drip’s Decolonial Policy seeks to dismantle these structures by ensuring equitable partnerships, amplifying historically excluded leadership, and embedding accountability in all aspects of our work.
To address the colonial continuities and operationalize its commitment to decoloniality, Drip by Drip pledges to…
Organizational Practices
- Openly address and acknowledge colonial continuities within our work and the industry >>> by acknowledging colonial continuities and addressing limitations or progress towards decolonial commitments on our public platforms and within internal and external reports.
- Regularly re-evaluate and improve DBD’s decolonial policies and practices >>> by conducting annual reviews of this policy and its implementation across projects, partnerships, and communications.
- Establishing mechanisms for accountability to decolonial commitments >>> by actively asking our GS partners annually to assess DBD’s decolonial practices, provide feedback and amend implementation strategies, if necessary.
Projects
- Decenter GN dominance by prioritizing voices from the GS and historically marginalized groups across projects, events and publications >>> by actively expanding our network to include GS experts, balance the input from GS experts in relation to that of GN experts to at least 50%, desirably more, in all of our projects and actively facilitate two-way knowledge sharing.
- Shift impact measurement towards qualitative, community-driven feedback, emphasizing the lived experiences of affected communities >>> by conducting interviews and collecting testimonials throughout project conception, implementation and evaluation.
Partnerships
- Promote balanced partnerships, ensuring that GS partners lead project design, development and decision-making >>> through prioritizing local leadership and governance, ensuring projects are sustainable and beneficial without ongoing external involvement.
- Foster open dialogue with GS partners and experts, allowing criticism to be voiced and acting upon such >>> through bi-annual check-ins with our GS partners, assessing needs and gathering actionable suggestions and recommendations.
Communication
- Ensure that public communications uphold the dignity, leadership, and autonomy of GS communities >>> by incorporating community-led narratives, perspectives and photographs as well as videos, as well as involving GS partners in content development.
- Reflect balanced partnerships and project leadership within public communications >>> by being transparent about the role of GS partners in project processes, explicitly naming partners and their work.
- Use power-neutral terminology and avoid the use of saviorist language in all of our communications >>> e.g. through the continuous development and active implementation of a “decoloniality phrasebank”
- Refrain from using people from the GS as marketing canvases >>> by always contextualizing pictures used internally and externally, providing the first name of the person shown, if available, the location, the context in which it has been taken and the credits of the photographer