The 25th edition of Lacombe's Social Media Breakfast was all about inclusion and diversity in your businesses social media, with the founders of Ubuntu-Mobilizing Central Alberta welcomed as guest speakers.

Co-founder Sadia Khan says with major social movements like Black Lives Matter currently going on, centring the voices of marginalized communities and bringing underrepresented voices into the conversation on a local level is more important the ever.

She says if a local business is hesitating to show support for social movements like BLM, they should ask them themselves why.

“If you’re feeling like you’re not able to do it visibly or put a sticker on, or put something on your social media, then have that conversation, as in: Why are we not able to do that? How is it that we can implement that? What could that look like? So there is always ways to have those conversations and be really on the right side of history in saying, we don’t only serve one part of our population, we are going to serve everyone.”

Ubuntu- Mobilizing Central Alberta is a non-profit that does a lot of work around anti-racism and anti-oppression as well as promoting those sometimes difficult community conversations around diversity, equality and inclusion.

Co-founder Dieulita Datus says when a company starts working towards representation of all groups they must be sure to reach out to those groups first and talk about how to do it properly.

“We’ve seen it happen so often, and we can always tell. Like, we can tell who’s tokenizing or patronizing, and those who are actually standing in solidarity with the community. Because you can tell how it’s done, you can tell they consulted with the communities before they put out these ads or before they decided to support something. And that goes back to my point of actually doing the work. Doing your research, consulting with members of the community, doing it right, paying people for their work, like those are the ways that you can actually do something instead of just sticking something on something and saying, ‘We stand in solidarity with Black and Indigenous people’.”

She says it's also important not to look at things like the Black Lives Matter movement as a fad, or a bandwagon a business can jump on in order to increase sales.

“So when they are thinking social media advertising, when they’re thinking hiring practices, when they are thinking who their business partners are, they need to think representation and diversity. So reach out to other people, Black and Indigenous people and people of colour, make sure we’re on the website, make sure that we can see we’re represented so that we can support these businesses instead of going to businesses in Edmonton or Calgary that are more friendly, I guess in terms of advertising towards BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of colour) people.”

She says you have to put some action behind your words, because fighting for equal rights and treatment for all is a 24/7, 365 days a year job, and those marginalized groups are always aware of who’s an ally, and who’s just doing it for show.

The next Social Media Breakfast Lacombe will be on December 2nd. More details can be found by clicking here to go to their website, smblacombe.ca.