| Equity & Diversity
“Words may inspire; action creates change”
Hello
It’s been a while since we posted. With the start of a new academic year, it seemed a good time to re-energise our blog. Oh, and did I mention it’s National Inclusion Week?
National Inclusion Week is a week dedicated to celebrating inclusion and taking action to create inclusive workplaces. Founded by Inclusive Employers, National Inclusion Week is now in its 10th year. The focus for 2022 is on action, which is why this year’s theme is ‘Time To Act: The Power of Now’.
Given this theme, it seemed appropriate to share with you some of the action the University took over the last twelve months. The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team, and the University, has again benefitted hugely from the contributions, energy and creativity of two student interns. Hopefully, you’ve read their previous blogs celebrating Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day (IWD). This year they’ve particularly focused their work on increased and consistent visibility across the Team’s social media channels, deliver the University’s Diversity and Inclusion Calendar, and support the development of a buddy scheme for our international students.
Other colleagues have led on activities and events to both mainstream and celebrate equality and diversity: One of our senior Social Work lecturers planned and delivered an International Women’s Day event with a keynote focused on this year’s IWD theme ‘Choose to Challenge’; our Women’s Network hosted several events including virtual brown bag lunches, talks on breast health and the Menopause. Our Chaplaincy team continued to offer a range of activities for our international students from regular trips to the always popular Global Café.
Perhaps the most important, strategic piece of work over the last academic year was the development of the University’s first Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Strategy: ‘Belonging.’ We’ve had equality objectives and action plans previously, and regularly update on our progress, but this is the first time that we have had a strategy. It feels a real achievement, only made possible by the contributions and engagement of colleagues and students across the University. To support the identification of our priorities, we undertook a staff Inclusion survey at the start of the year. This enabled us to reflect within the strategy those areas that really matter to our staff. It also provided baseline data against which we can measure our progress. Keen to hear our students’ voice, we also conducted a student inclusion survey.
We see our strategy as a strategy for everyone, from our current students and staff, and those we hope will join us in the future, to our partners, suppliers, and contractors.
If you haven’t had chance to read it yet, you can read the full document here or visit our website.
The Team also collaborated with a local organisation, ‘The Jigsaw. Change in Action’ to establish a Black, Asian Minority Ethnic Business Network. The Network provides an opportunity to connect business owners, entrepreneurs and organisational leads across Gloucestershire, facilitating their stronger representation within the County.
This Network continues to flourish, expanding its membership at each event. Its next event is 20th October to coincide with Black History Month. If you’d like to attend, you can book on here.
With a focus firmly on action, the University will be working to put on other events and activities across this academic year.
We’ll be at the Gloucester Pride Event on Saturday 1st October 2022 from 11.00am located at Gloucester Park, just off Park Road, GL1 1LY.
To keep up to date, don’t forgot to follow us on Twitter @UoGEquality and if you want to develop your knowledge on EDI further, please look at the following Talis List that reference videos, articles, and websites.
