Nondiscrimination/Anti-Harassment Policy

The Wedding and Event Vendor Alliance is committed to an environment in which all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. Each individual has the right to work in a professional atmosphere that promotes equal employment opportunities and prohibits unlawful discriminatory practices, including harassment. Therefore, WEVA expects that all relationships among members, employees, members of the Board of Directors, and leadership is free of explicit bias, prejudice and harassment.

In order to keep this commitment, WEVA maintains a strict policy of prohibiting unlawful harassment of any kind, including sexual harassment and harassment based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, sex, age, physical or mental disability or any other characteristic protected by state, federal or local employment discrimination laws. This policy applies to all members, employees, members of the Board of Directors, leadership and to business partners who engage in unlawful harassment in the work environment.

Anti-racism

Public Statement

WEDDING AND EVENT VENDOR ALLIANCE (“WEVA”) REJECTS ALL FORMS OF RACISM. RACISM IN ANY FORM WILL NOT BE TOLERATED HERE OR IN ANY EVENTS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS ALLIANCE. WEVA IS COMMITTED TO THE MISSION OF INCREASING CULTURAL RESPECT BY CULTIVATING GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF CONCEPTS OF DIVERSITY, INCLUSION, EQUITY, IMPLICIT BIAS, WHITE PRIVILEGE, WHITE SUPREMACY, AND SYSTEMIC RACISM SPECIFICALLY WITHIN THE WEDDING AND EVENT INDUSTRY.

Policy Scope

This policy applies to all Wedding and Event Vendor Alliance (“WEVA”) members, including but not limited to its general membership, sponsor membership, Board of Directors, and all other staff and affiliates. 

This policy has been developed in collaboration with Writing Wrongs, LLC.

Purpose of Policy

The purpose of this policy is to acknowledge, prevent, and eliminate all forms of racism within the Wedding and Event Vendor Alliance (“WEVA”), including but not limited to, its general members, sponsor members, Board of Directors, and all other staff and affiliates. 

The goals of this Anti-Racism policy include: 

• Promoting meaningful conversation regarding the history, contribution, and perspectives of ethnic and social groups, specifically those traditionally excluded from the wedding and event planning industry. 

• Creating engagement opportunities that provide General Members, Sponsor Members, Board of Directors and clients with a welcoming means of raising concerns about any experiences related to racial, ethnic, or social identity when interacting with WEVA.

• Assisting in the creation of brave spaces for people to comfortably discuss race and racism within the wedding and event industry. 

• Formulating guidelines to foster and encourage personal and professional growth regarding anti-racism for WEVA’s General Members, Sponsor Members and members of the Board of Directors through providing the opportunity to access educational and training materials. 

• Ensure accountability regarding actively working towards an anti-racist lifestyle amongst all WEVA’s members, including but not limited to: general membership, sponsor membership, and members of the Board of Directors.  

• Prohibit vendors affiliated with WEVA as General Members and Sponsor Members from turning away clients based on race, class, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, or gender identity. 

Policy Statement

It is the policy of the Wedding and Event Vendor Alliance (“WEVA”) to:

• Affirm the need to provide brave spaces for learning for all members.

• Commit to a collective responsibility within WEVA to address, eliminate, and prevent actions, decisions, and outcomes that result from and perpetuate racism. 

• Eliminate inequitable practices that create prejudicial or disparate outcomes for members and clients based on social or cultural factors, such as race, class, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, or gender identity.

• Respect and champion the diversity of varied life experiences of all general membership, sponsor membership, Board of Directors, and clients, which contribute to WEVA’s goals of diversity, inclusivity, equity, access, and justice. 

• Acknowledge that racism is often compounded by other forms of discrimination, including but not limited to prejudice, implicit or overt bias, stereotyping, and racial profiling. 

• Encourage WEVA general membership and sponsor membership to use inclusive language on all marketing materials and internal documents including, but not limited to the vendor’s contracts, website, and social media pages to ensure an inclusive experience from beginning to end.

Glossary

Language is powerful. WEVA provides this glossary to help define the specific terms and phrases included in our member policies.

Anti-racism: the practice of identifying, challenging, and changing the values, structures and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism. 

Brave Spaces: a non-physical space within a school or organization designed to help create an environment that allows individuals to engage with one another over controversial issues like race, diversity, and social justice with honesty, sensitivity, and respect. The intention is to help reassure those who feel anxious about sharing their thoughts and feelings regarding these sensitive and controversial issues.

Ethnicity: the social characteristics that people may have in common, such as language, religion, regional background, culture, foods, etc. Ethnicity is revealed by the traditions one follows, a person’s native language, and so on. 

Explicit Bias: is characterized by overt negative behavior that can be expressed through physical and verbal harassment or through more subtle means such as exclusion.

Implicit Bias: a mental process that stimulates negative attitudes about people who are not members of one’s own “in group” often developed in response to direct and indirect negative information an individual receives throughout their lives related to race. While these biases are often relatively inaccessible to conscious awareness and/or control, they may dictate one’s feelings and actions towards groups of people if unchecked. 

Individual Racism: pre-judgment, bias, or discrimination by an individual based on race. Individual racism includes both privately held beliefs, conscious and unconscious, and external behaviors and actions towards others.

Institutional Racism: occurs within institutions and organizations, such as schools, that adopt and maintain policies, practices, and procedures that often unintentionally produce inequitable outcomes for people of color and advantages for white people

Microaggression: the everyday, subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups.

Nationality: the status of belonging to a particular nation.  

Racism: A social construct that artificially divides people into distinct groups based on certain characteristics such as physical appearance (particularly skin color) ancestral heritage, cultural affiliation, cultural history, ethnic classification. 

Stereotypes: the belief that most members of a particular group have some specific characteristic or set of characteristics. 

Tokenism: the practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group, or planning a styled shoot with models from an underrepresented group without a commitment to inclusivity) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly. 

White Privilege: a web of institutional and cultural treatment and exemption from racial and national oppression that results in preferential treatment for white people. 

White Supremacy: the political, economic, and cultural systems in which white individuals overwhelmingly control power over material resources—a form of dominance and control, and not just the overt hate of one group towards another. 

Systemic or Structural Racism: The way in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various ways to reinforce and perpetuate racial group inequity. It is not something we as individual members of society actively choose to practice, instead it is a feature of the social, economic, and political systems in which we all exist.  It refers to the history, culture, ideology, and interactions of institutions and policies that perpetuate a system of inequity that is detrimental to communities of color.