Today is Juneteenth which marks the 155th anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States. Juneteenth celebrates African American freedom and achievement and also provides us the opportunity to embrace continuous self-development and respect for all cultures.
It is in that spirit that we are proud to share our stance in response to the systemic injustices that are happening to the black community in the United States.
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We share in the heartbreak and pain felt by millions across the world in response to the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks as well as the countless other Black Americans who have died as a result of inhumanity and injustice in this country. We mourn for every person who has been affected by the systemic, pervasive injustices across the United States.
At OneSight, we are committed to equal opportunity, empowerment and access for all. We strive to create a world where access to vision care is no longer a barrier to human possibility and potential. We are only able to accomplish this goal by embracing our individual strengths and our diversity ensuring that we are stronger together. Our commitment cannot be fulfilled without recognizing the pervasive racial disparities that exist in our society, these disparities impact the health and livelihood of black communities.
OneSight stands with the Black community in the fight for equality, compassion and justice. We acknowledge racism is a systemic problem and strongly reject hate, racism and bigotry of any kind. We will actively support changes to a system that has been structured to create imbalance, and we are committed to being part of the solution.
We will examine our organization and do the work to change ourselves and the world around us.
As an initial step we are committed to:
- Achieving a representative and equitable organization including looking at our hiring practices, compensation review and succession planning.
- Training our entire organization on diversity and inclusion.
- Implementing supplier diversity measures to our RFP and vendor selection process.
- Reviewing our programming strategies to increase support of the black community.
In addition to the plans above we commit to a journey of continuous improvement upholding, through word and action, that Black Lives Matter.
We are approaching change with a strong sense of resolve to help fight the forces that block the progress of the black community. It is important to us to be an organization where people of all races, all faiths and backgrounds can come together to help advance our mission.
We invite our volunteers, partners, donors, board members and others to join us and welcome new partners to help drive the change that the world so desperately needs.