We
are a sustainability charity, supporting greener, fairer and healthier
communities in Birmingham. We deliver a range of activities from cycling,
education, community gardening, and sustainability action planning.
In 2023:
The progress we have made against our commitments in Jan 2023 to Feb 2024 are set out below:
Action: Regular progress reports (every 6 months) to the People Committee of our
Board reporting progress against the DSI actions in our annual business plan. Progress -
actions for 23/24 agreed, in annual plan, and progress reported to Board
Action: Pictures of staff and board on our website to be transparent about diversity of
organisation. Progress - not yet completed, but latest 22/23 impact report published in Sept
23 includes a range of ethnicities, genders and ages engaged in environmental action.
Action: Recruit new trustees based on skills gap, including access to a range of
networks across the city that represent more diverse communities. Recruit a young Trustee
Board member (22-30). Progress - 4 new Board members recruited to address skills gaps, two are first time trustees, two are different ethnicities to existing trustees, one provides access and perspective of some south asian communities in the north of the city, one has benefited from a diversity trustee support programme. Will try recruiting a younger trustee later in year.
Action: Case study of working with a partner to reach a diverse audience. Progress -
continued working with local community partners in Sparkbrook and Sparkhill to deliver local cycling, route finding, and childrens activities for women from a largely muslim and south asian
heritage. Continued to work with multi-faith partner to deliver energy and environmental advice to over different places of worship and faith communities. Case
studies yet to be written up.
Action: Undertake staff training on how to listen and engage with different diverse
audiences. Progress - Community conversations events have been rolled out by staff over the year to engage and listen to different communities. This has resulted in securing funding for a 3 year project to support several of these communities on sustainability. Training held with staff with in Feb 2024 with external community provider to help build confidence in engaging and being curious with diverse communities we work with.
Action: Ensure consistency of current good practice in job recruitment (description,
recruitment networks, opportunity to talk to recruiting manager about role, equalities
monitoring, blind shortlisting etc) is also being applied to our other recruitment type
processes for Trustees, volunteers, and associates. Progress - being implemented, and during recruitment in 2023 had more diverse shortlist for advertised role, and our new Head of Programmes, and member of our Senior Management Team (SMT) is from a different ethnicity of the rest of SMT.
Action: Create a consistent baseline of the diversity of the beneficaries we work with. Progress - have begun to collect data from event registration and evaluation forms for our events. In April 2024 we should have our first full year of data to create a baseline. Birmingham is 51% non-white ethnicities, and we want to see how that compares to those we work with.
In 2024:
Action: Create our first baseline of the diversity of the beneficiaries we work with annually.
Action: When our website is updated put pictures of staff and trustees up to illustrate diversity of backgrounds.
Action: Create case studies of the partners and diverse communities we have worked with e.g. Asian Wedding Dress swap event to reduce waste.