At Fastly, we are committed to inclusion and diversity (I&D). We believe that the diversity of the global communities we serve should be reflected in everything we do if we want to make impactful differences for those communities, especially those that are disadvantaged or marginalized. The communities we serve have different perspectives and lived experiences that we can learn from. Understanding those perspectives will allow us to change how we think.
We invite you to join the Fastly Documentation team in our annual goal to educate ourselves and share what we learn via links to people, holidays, and other significant dates that are important to the culture of our fellow Fastlyans and the communities they serve. Specifically, we want to:
educate people on interesting aspects of the culture of fellow Fastlyans, especially during awareness months;
highlight additional information about a holiday, day of recognition, or period of awareness that's important to us; and
increase awareness around non-dominant and cultural holidays.
Follow your curious spirit and click on these links when you notice them. Through education and increased awareness, we hope to create community-building opportunities that go beyond Fastly.
National Novel Writing Month, usually referred to by its shortened name NaNoWriMo, is an annual creating writing challenge that encourages and supports writers to "use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds." Each year during November, participants are encouraged to write the first draft of a 50,000-word manuscript in the space of a single month. Since its inception, a number of notable novels result from the annual event.
Trans Day of Remembrance memorializes those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia and draws attention to the continued violence endured by transgender people.
Piominko (he/him) was a pre-removal Chickasaw leader who signed the first Treaty of Hopewell, formalizing the tribe's alliance with the government of a very young United States that had formally declared their independence from the British Empire only 10 years prior.
The Fiesta de la Ñatitas is a Bolivian holiday mixing Indigenous and Catholic traditions. Bolivians gather at cemeteries carrying skulls and then dance, sing, and pray around the city as a way of celebrating life and fertility and respecting and honoring the forgotten dead.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a K'iche' Guatemalan activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. She is notable for her work to promote indigenous rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation.
Dr. Grace Hopper (she/her) was an American computer scientist and mathematician who served in the United States Navy. In the computing industry, she is well known for the discovery of a moth in a computer relay, leading to the terms "bug" and "debugging" becoming popular when describing computer malfunctions. The moth and the log book documenting its discovery are now located in the Smithsonian.
Felicitas Mendez was a Puerto Rican American activist. Together with her husband, they filed a lawsuit in 1945 on behalf of around 5,000 Hispanic-American schoolchildren in the Orange County school system protesting segregation. Their landmark case paved the way for other desegregation cases including Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
2023 commemorates the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on August 6th and August 9th, 1945. The observance serves as a reminder of the disastrous effects of war and pays respect to the approximately 226,000 victims who died that day.
Disability Pride Month commemorates the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was signed into law on July 26, 1990. This month aims to celebrate people with disabilities, honor and uphold their inherent dignity and inalienable rights, and promote their visibility and contributions.
June 2023
To celebrate LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, we will highlight important LGBTQIA+ figures each week.
LGBTQIA+ Pride Month honors the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall rebellion and raises awareness of works that seek to achieve equal justice and opportunity for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning Americans.
Dr. Sally Ride (she/her) was the first American woman in space and is now recognized as the first acknowledged gay astronaut. Her sexual orientation was not discovered until after her death in 2012 when her obituary was posted by Sally Ride Science, the educational organization she founded.
Audrey Lorde (she/her) was (as quoted in Wikipedia) a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet." She is best known for the expression of emotions in her poetry that highlighted, confronted, and demanded solutions to rights surrounding racism, sexism, feminism, queer identity, illness, and disability.
World Refugee Day, designated as such by the United Nations, aims to "build empathy and understanding for refugees around the world and recognize their resilience in rebuilding their lives."
Geo Soctomah Neptune (she/they) is an Indigenous artist who works with Passamaquoddy and Wabanaki youths to preserve the culture arts of their ancestors by teaching basket weaving in the state of Maine in the United States. In 2020, they were the first openly two-spirited person to be elected to public office in Maine. They champion social and political issues that impact Indigenous people through their activism.
May 2023
To celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we will highlight an important figure of Asian American or Pacific Islander origin each week.
Alice Wong (she/her) is a disabled activist and writer who founded the Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture.
Larry Itliong (he/him) was a Filipino American labor organizer who advocated for farm workers’ rights. One of his most notable and successful campaigns was the Delano Grape Strike, which united thousands of Filipino American farm workers to strike for better wages and basic necessities like clean water and toilets.
Ellison Onizuka (he/him) was the first Asian American and first person of Japanese origin to reach space. Sadly, he and his 6 crew mates lost their lives during the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.
Terisa Siagatonu (she/they) is a Samoan queer poet, community leader, and mental health educator born and based in the San Francisco Bay area. Her poetry combines her intersectional experience with political and personal calls to action.
Observe and reflect on the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda that resulted in more than 1 million people dying in the short span of 100 days. April 7th marks the day the genocide started.
World Immunization Week, a campaign by the World Health Organization (WHO), aims to highlight the need and promote the use of vaccines to protect people across the globe from diseases.
March 2023
The theme of 2023's Women's History month is "Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories." To celebrate Women’s History Month this year, we will highlight the stories and contributions of women that history has overlooked. As this is a declared month in the US, UK, and Australia, we've selected four women from around the globe who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of truth.
Joan Ruth Bader Ginsberg (she/her) was an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States until her recent death from cancer in 2020. She was the first Jewish woman and second woman overall to serve on the Court. Even before her career on the Court, her legal briefs and writings were instrumental in advocating for the protection of women and their equality.
Zenzile Miriam Makeba (she/her), noted singer and songwriter of Swazi and Xhosa decent, used her musical talents to oppose the institutionalized segregation and white supremacy of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Her prominence as a political and cultural style icon contributed to the strengthening of Pan-Africanism throughout the world during her lifetime.
لالہ یوسفزئی (Malala Yousafzai, she/her) is the world's youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She came to the world's attention through her activism in Pakistan, which started at the age of 11, where she spoke out on behalf of women and their right to education.
Олена Олегівна Шевченко (Olena Olehivna Shevchenko, she/her), an activist for human rights in Ukraine, is known especially for her tireless work supporting women's rights and LGBTQIA+ rights. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, she was instrumental in organizing safe havens and support for refugees fleeing the conflicts.
Major Taylor (he/him) is known as one of the fastest men ever to race on two wheels, an American who dominated sprint cycling in the late 1800s and early 1900s becoming the 2nd Black athlete to win a world championship in any sport. He did all this while battling bitter racial prejudice and physical violence from those competing against him.
Daisy Gaston Bates (she/her) was a civil rights activist and journalist who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957, when a group of nine African American students enrolled in a previously all-white high school in Arkansas after the US Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional. Bates believed that her greatest contribution to this seminal moment in American Civil Rights history was ensuring that none of the children participating in the desegregation activities were physically harmed, even during the most turbulent years of her advocacy.
Doctor Charles Richard Drew (he/him) helped develop America’s first large-scale blood banking program in the 1940s, earning him accolades as “the father of the blood bank." In 1942, he resigned from his position as the first director of the American Red Cross due to their policies of segregating African-American blood donations, a practice that continued well into the 1950s.
In 1969, President Richard Nixon (he/him) proclaimed January as national blood donor month in the U.S., both to celebrate those everyday heroes who donate blood and encourage blood donation during the winter months, one of the most difficult times to maintain a sufficient blood supply.
January 10 marks National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Human trafficking is the third largest crime industry in the world despite being condemned as a gross violation of human rights by international conventions. Anyone can join the fight against human trafficking.
International Holocaust Remembrance honors the memory of the six million Jews and millions of other victims killed in the Holocaust by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. This day marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Nelson Mandela Day