RIEEA is very happy to endorse the eeGuidance for Equitable Pay & Hiring and commits to examining and improving our processes and practices around position design, recruitment, hiring, salary, and benefits.
Environmental education, like many other sectors, endeavors to answer the calls to examine its history of institutional racism and discrimination, adopt more inclusive hiring practices and address inequities in compensation and benefits packages to make our field more equitable, welcoming, and sustainable.
This guidance was developed by the Southeastern Environmental Education Alliance (SEEA) and was informed by their 2021 landscape analysis to understand the current state, ongoing needs, and growth areas for the environmental education field. This data confirms that entry-level pay in environmental education is 15-25% lower than in comparable fields such as forestry, tourism, and formal education.
The guidance provides researched explanations of why equitable pay and hiring matter, outlines specific minimum standards for employers to enact immediately, and identifies the target standards that we all must work toward to transform employment in our field.
Learn more and access the guidance here.