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Our Values & Equity Statement

T1International Values

We recognize that our values are aspirational and they represent what and how we desire to be. They serve to inspire us and hold us accountable alongside our action plan.

  • Patient-led: We amplify patient voices, and we give people living with diabetes a direct role in organisational decision-making to ensure T1International and the #insulin4all movement keep patient voices front and center. Our messaging, focus, and mindset are patient-led.
  • Independent: We do not accept funding from the pharmaceutical industry or any entity that we believe would compromise our independence, integrity or ability to speak out freely.
  • Transparent: We strive to conduct ourselves with clarity, respect, and directness, so that others will always know where we stand. This includes thoughtful and proactive information sharing, in addition to financial and organisational transparency.
  • Inclusive: Our work, our values, our team, and our community reflect patients and a range of allies, from caregivers, to parents, to partners, to those committed to health equity and justice work. We acknowledge and seek to address the harm caused by systems of oppression and unnecessary hierarchies. We aim to share power with each other and our community and to be inclusive of people across lines of difference including race, gender identity, geographic location, language, literacy, economic status, type of diabetes, and more. 
  • Bold: We believe our mission is possible and that we must boldly and without fear challenge those in power to ensure the rights of people with diabetes are upheld, even when it is not easy. We welcome hard conversations and don’t make assumptions, relying on each other to find solutions. We seek to transform the underlying structures that result in inequity and injustice.
  • Hopeful: We share a profound belief in the people and places with which we work. Our optimism about the possibility of change is rooted in our sense of hope and a determination to persist as a community, despite and because so many have faced unimaginable challenges. We work towards a world where our goals are achieved and there is no need for T1International to exist.
Equity Statement

We have developed this equity vision statement as a companion to our values to ensure that equity is an ongoing, deep-rooted part of the organisation's work. This statement makes an explicit commitment to equity and sets our intention to do the work.

To honour T1International’s global vision, we commit to work toward health equity and justice. Our commitment to equity in our aims and actions is ongoing and, as with our values, we know we are not yet fully living up to this vision. We know that it takes time to do this work and it must be revisited on an ongoing basis. Our everyday actions, including our organisational and individual work plans, must reflect our commitment and hold us accountable. We pledge to do this daily work, acknowledge when we make mistakes and work to repair them. We understand that though there are no perfect or simplistic answers, we strive as an organisation to prioritize equity.

We want to create an organisational culture where our team - our staff, our volunteers, and our wider community - is comfortable talking about the inequities they experience and feels that they are being heard and responded to. We aim to dismantle hierarchies and believe that sharing power with each other and our community is critical to our work and to justice. We acknowledge that our current team is not fully reflective of the diversity of the diabetes community and thus we are not yet an inclusive space for everyone. We aim to have a team that best reflects our T1International community, and a community that reflects the world.

Definitions:

  • Diversity: the ways and identities that make people unique and different from each other - whether it is because of the location someone lives, their background and culture, or their life experience and ways of thinking
  • Equity: ensuring that policies, practices, and resources are used and implemented in ways that create a space where all people have genuine opportunities to be represented and to succeed, recognizing that more must be allocated to those most in need
  • Health Justice: a state where all people - regardless of who they are or where they are - have the resources and the economic, social, and political power to make decisions about their bodies and to take action to stay healthy
  • Inclusion: creating an accessible, welcoming space where everyone feels able to participate fully in our community because they are respected, heard, and valued

Read about our approach to language.