Justice
Justice is the concept of fairness. Social justice is fairness as it manifests in society, including in education, healthcare, employment, housing and access.
Any child on a playground recognizes what’s fair and what’s not. Even in adulthood, fairness, as a concept of justice, is clear and useful.
Social Justice & equity
Equity is the state, quality or ideal of being just, impartial and fair. The concept of equity is synonymous with fairness and justice. It is helpful to think of equity as not simply a desired state of affairs or a lofty value. To achieve and sustain equity, it needs to be thought of as a structural and systemic concept.
allyship
Allyship is an active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person holding systemic power seeks to end oppressions in solidarity with a group of people who are systemically disempowered. Since everyone holds systemic power in some areas and lacks it in others, everyone has areas in which they can practice allyship. Allyship is an action that intercepts micro-, corrects aggressors in a firm yet compassionate way that can influence change and growth, and upholds the humanity of BIPOC colleagues and others in order to shift the system.
community/human-centered design
MANAUS works at the intersection of human-centered design and community organizing. Our expertise isn’t in one or two fields or issues, but in a process of creating solutions in almost any context as we Listen, Imagine, and Launch. This process allows us to partner with members of the community because we know that the best solutions come from the people and communities we live in.
listen, imagine, launch
The only way we can truly assess the promise of a proposal or understand the needs of the community is to listen. This process is personal for us, spending time in the community and relating deeply with those with whom we are working. This stage also involves copious research. Because of the variability of our projects, each one is a learning opportunity. Like good researchers in any other context we seek to over-learn a topic before we pretend to have anything to say about it. We listen hard.
After listening and researching, possible solutions start to leap out. Alongside our community partners, we dare to think big reaching for answers nobody has thought of, especially the risky ones. As a team of thinkers and dreamers, our ideas naturally scatter in all directions. Throughout this process, ideas are brainstormed wildly. After a time, we explore all of these ideas one at a time, we revise and some are thrown out. When we create this environment of freedom and imagination, we unleash ourselves from the constraints of precedent. We aren’t looking for the expected idea, we are looking for the extraordinary one that works!
Our diligence and exploration up to this point often results in programs that are practical, inspired and sustainable. MANAUS believes in working with the communities and organizations that will thrive on their own post-launch. At MANAUS, we know we have built something great when we become completely unnecessary to run it.
The key here is ownership
Anything we create at MANAUS will be owned and operated by those with whom we have partnered. Here and into the future, this allows the community to advance under its own power, for its own sake.
Solidarity & allyship
To work in solidarity with others is to unite oneself with another to promote a common interest. Allies are people who are not only helpers, but also act on the common interest with those they desire to support. In an alliance, both parties stand to benefit from the bond or connection they share.
At Manaus, we believe that solidarity and allyship are more powerful than charity. That harmony in our communities requires not dissolution into sameness, but the space and safety for people, families, and communities, to become fuller versions of themselves. It is our firm belief that the best solutions for a given issue come from within that community. Therefore, much of MANAUS’s work involves community organizing and community-building – not just as tactics for meeting project goals, but as ways to strengthen our most enduring and powerful bonds.