British Columbia ABA

By Sarah Pastrana
This year was a busy one for the British Columbia Association for Behavior Analysis!

The board has been actively involved in advocacy to protect individualized provincial autism funding and to expand access to individualized funding for other disabilities. We continue to work with the BC Disability Collaborative, a group comprised of organizations from across the disability sector, to advocate for increased funding and access to services for underserved groups.

In 2022, the board created a new committee to address Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) on the board and in our professional community. We were excited to welcome the first board member elected to this position in April 2022! We added a second elected member to the DEI committee in April 2023. The DEI committee organizes monthly meetings and trainings for our membership and provides guidance on board decisions. The board has made yearly DEI training mandatory for all elected officials. We have also updated our student grant program to make access to funding more equitable for our student members.

The board has also been engaged in an overhaul of our organizational and governance systems. We have been working with an agency that provides support and training to non-profit organizations to review and revise many structures and systems within our organization, from our vision, mission, and values, to building board culture, to how meetings are run. Most recently, we completed an overhaul of our onboarding manuals and onboarding process.

Finally, BC-ABA held our 15th annual conference in March 2023. We were thrilled to be able to return to an in-person event this year after two years of meeting online. This year we hope to be able to offer more opportunities for our members to connect and foster grater connections among our professional community.