This October, our grassroots movement Adevinta for Everyone (A4E) organised multiple initiatives on a global and local scale to honour and celebrate Black History Month.
While we are aware that countries such as the US and Canada celebrate in February, we decided to dedicate the month of October to Black History Month to align with several European countries. Moreover, the UK Black History Month’s theme, “Saluting Our Sisters”, particularly resonated with the topics that we wanted to shed a light on.
The Black Archives
Our celebrations started with a virtual Adevinta Bytes session open to the whole company, where guest speaker Jessica de Abreu from The Black Archives, talked us through the history of racism and its role in academic thinking, and explored the roots of intersectional theory. Jessica is an anthropologist and one of the co-founders of The Black Archives, an Amsterdam-based historical archive consisting of more than 10,000 books on racism, feminism, colonisation, slavery and much more – with a particular focus on the legacy of Black Dutch writers.
Local events throughout our hubs
We always try to bring the conversation to our own local realities by organising in-person events at our hubs. Our Parisian A4E squad hosted a very insightful conversation introduced by French General Manager Amandine de Souza. They invited journalist, teacher and author Mélody Thomas to explore the topic of inclusion in the fashion industry, since the fashion market holds a key role within leboncoin.
Hidden Figures
Our Amsterdam colleagues organised a screening of “Hidden Figures”, a movie focused on the contributions of three Black female mathematicians who helped get the U.S. to the moon in the 60s. It perfectly matched the overall theme of “Saluting our Sisters”.
Black Achievements Awards
On October 30th, 10 employees from Amsterdam were also offered a ticket to attend the Black Achievement Awards, an event that shines a light on individuals who excel in fields such as sports, arts and culture, science and education.
Adevinta 4 Everyone corner
In the meantime, the rest of the A4E group was and still is busy creating an “A4E Corner” in each hub: a space dedicated to books, board games and other items focused on DEI. Our employees can donate or borrow books as well share their own little reviews and feedback. t. This corner will represent a key space within the office where conversation can be sparked and our employees can inform themselves on topics that span from Black History Month to LGBTQIA+ rights, bias in the tech world and much more!
Moving forward
It’s important to stress that at Adevinta we are on a constant journey when it comes to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and we are continuously learning how to best honour and celebrate observances such as Black History Month. We welcome feedback from our employees and also try to ensure that we keep ourselves updated on current discourses. We commit to doing better year by year, as our DEI efforts solidify throughout the business and we are very excited to see what the next year will bring!
