Our commitments
Equity, lived experience, and the ground beneath the work.
At Social Roots Studio, equity isn't an add-on to connection work — it's a precondition for it. You can't grow meaningful, regenerative belonging while leaving in place the inequities that keep people disconnected in the first place. These are the commitments that hold us to that.
Inequity as a Root Cause of disconnection
Who gets to experience compassionate belonging — and who is left out — is not random. Inequity is one of the most common barriers to meaningful connection: the structures that distribute resources, safety, and voice unevenly also distribute connection, isolation, and loneliness unevenly. The people most often marginalized, excluded, or under-served are frequently the same people experiencing barriers to the relationships and spaces where community has traditionally grown. That's why we treat equity not as an add-on but as a precondition for meaningful, regenerative connection — and why reducing inequity is part of the connection work itself, not separate from it.
Accessibility
Meaningful social connection should be available to everyone, regardless of ability — and we're committed to making our services as accessible as possible to people who live with disabilities. We don't live with a disability ourselves at this time, and we hold that people who do carry far greater knowledge of accessibility than we do. So we stay close to disability advocates and advocacy organizations, listen, and keep learning how to do better.
In our spaces.
We seek out the most accessible locations we can for events. Often we're working in communities with older buildings that aren't ours to modify; when a fully accessible space isn't available, we do our best to find one — or to work around barriers with creative solutions. Inaccessibility is one of the most significant barriers to growing meaningful connection, so reducing it is part of the work itself. We also advise clients and partners on improving accessibility wherever we have the chance, and point them toward local disability advocacy organizations for expert guidance.
In our digital work.
Where possible, we use tools and technology that keep our digital services and materials usable with screen readers and other adaptive technology, and we work to stay current as those tools evolve.
Tell us where we're falling short. We're committed to ongoing improvement, and we especially welcome input from people with lived experience. If you encounter an accessibility barrier or have a suggestion,
please reach out: jeanette@socialrootsstudio.co or 802-342-5811.
A Commitment to honoring Lived Experience I Do not Carry
Much of the deepest disconnection — leading to isolation and loneliness rooted in exclusion, stigma, and being made to feel one doesn't belong — may fall hardest on people navigating barriers I have not had to navigate myself. People living with disabilities or chronic illness; Black, Indigenous, and people of color; people carrying the stigma of substance use and recovery; people whose gender or sexuality has made them targets; new Americans and immigrants; veterans; older and younger adults; people held back by poverty; and others whose daily experience of the world differs from mine.
Social connection work done carelessly can re-injure the very people it means to serve — by designing for some and overlooking others, or by assuming one person's experience of belonging speaks for everyone's. I won't pretend to understand what I haven't lived. What I commit to instead is this: to center the people closest to each experience as the authority on it, to keep learning rather than assuming, to design with rather than for, and to treat my own gaps as something to work on continually — not something I've resolved.
Equity expertise isn't a credential I hold. I've made plenty of mistakes from my own biases and blind spots, and this is a practice I am committed to showing up for — getting things wrong, and committing to repair to the best of my ability when I do.
This begins with the very ground beneath the work.
Social Roots Studio operates from N'dakinna — the traditional and unceded homeland of the Abenaki and Wabanaki peoples. I name this as someone whose own family history is part of the European colonization of this land, and who carries the privilege that history conferred.
I have much to learn here. I don't want to offer a land acknowledgment built on good intentions and tidy words — the kind that asks nothing of the person making it. Acknowledgment without action can become its own form of erasure and disconnection. So I hold this not as a finished statement but as an ongoing commitment: to keep learning from Indigenous voices, to build genuine relationships rather than borrow them, and to let equitable action — not sentiment — be the measure of whether this means anything.
This is critical to growing compassionate belonging across Vermont, not separate from it.