National Inclusion Week, running 23 to 29 September, provides an opportunity to reflect on our role in supporting Sustain alliance members, and others in the sustainable food and farming movement, on how to create more inclusive workplaces. We have a dedicated project that is working to improve ethnic and racial diversity and inclusion in our sector therefore this blog focuses on those issues, whilst acknowledging the intersectionality and breadth of inclusion-based issues.
Too often work in the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) space focuses on the diversity whilst overlooking equity and inclusion. These initiatives can be focused on increasing representation whilst failing to address the deeper reasons behind such inequalities. We have previously explored the challenge of taking a target-driven approach to DEI and how they can be used as a driver for change.
Our work - as an organisation, an alliance, and a movement - around inclusion must be focussed on learning and impact, otherwise long-term change will not happen. By acknowledging that the lack of racial diversity in our sector is a product of systemic racism, and that both the charity sector and food system have colonial histories, we can begin to unravel much of the harm that prevails today.
This month we started a programme of movement building support that will engage 15 sustainable food and farming organisations across the UK over the coming six months to support them to centre inclusion and anti-racism, beyond the typical diversity initiatives.
To do this meaningfully we will encourage organisations to:
- Ensure there is adequate resource and capacity committed to these efforts.
- Learn from those doing this work well. That could be in our sector or look to others leading the way elsewhere.
- Bring staff, stakeholders, partners and customers on the journey with them. Without buy-in to your vision it can be a challenge to progress it meaningfully. Co-creating is one of the most inclusive practices within such work.
- Make it relevant to their work and the issues they are working on. People engage and empathise with what matters to them.
- Centre those with lived experience - but absolutely not in a tokenistic way. Support racialised and marginalised people in your organisation and consider the structural challenges that disempower people and communities.
- Reflect on what has worked (as well as how you measure success), what you - and others - have learnt, and where more needs to be done. Impact isn't always about numbers. In fact, it should be much more tangible than a statistic.
This work is a journey. Change won't happen overnight and a lot of unlearning must happen on the way. If you can centre this work across your projects, programmes, campaigns and services, over time it will have that ripple effect of change to create a more equitable sustainable food and farming sector.
You can access a free National Inclusion Week toolkit online from Inclusive Employers.
