Addressing inequality, exclusion and discrimination

Written by Charley, Nov 2024

Graffiti in Reading, Nov 2024

It’s easy to find yourself in a bubble, an echo chamber of people who believe what you believe. For me, one of those beliefs is that all people should be treated with respect and kindness. It can then be hard to be reminded that there are lots of people in the world (even in Salisbury!) who have different beliefs that are really hard to hear.

A few weeks ago, my partner Tanay and I were enjoying a quiet pint in our local pub. We’ve had many friendly conversations with other customers over the past 6 months since we moved to Salisbury. This time, we were just chatting to each other when a man at the bar said something along the lines of “I can’t even get a GP appointment nowadays because of all the illegals coming over on boats.”. He went on, I tried to ignore it, I debated in my head about trying to have a discussion with him. After a minute or so we decided to move to another table, and as we passed him I asked if he could keep his voice down. Free speech is a right. Hate speech is horrible. The landlady had a word with him, which I am grateful for (not an easy job!).

(not the pub we were in!)

A focus on wildlife conservation – anecdote

It is well-known that the wildlife conservation sector is one of the least diverse sectors in the UK. A couple of years ago, I got very frustrated with staff from 2 big charities who turned down offers of volunteer help from me and a small group of adults with learning disabilities I was working with. I do understand that workloads for staff within these NGOs is huge and anything that takes a bit more time is hard to say yes to – which is why I said we would bring our own hot drinks, gloves and tools. The tasks were simple “scrub bashing”; they literally had to point us in the right direction and tell us what to cut/not cut, but they missed out. My project members missed out too. One used time constraints as their excuse, the other used bureaucracy. Both passed me back and forth between the site manager and volunteer coordinator. I still can’t believe their final decision was no, we don’t want your help. There is a serious lack of diversity in the conservation sector. There are some efforts to address this – some genuine and some hot air. I literally handed them an opportunity on a plate and they turned me down to continue to work with their middle-class, retired, white, male volunteers. These people are excellent – or normal, some won’t be excellent. But they should not be the only ones.

What is Wildlife and Wellbeing doing to address inequality, exclusion and discrimination?

Wildlife and Wellbeing is proud to be an inclusive organisation.
We value diversity, and aim to create a community that reflects the breadth of people in our local society, including marginalised people.
We aim for all levels of our community to reflect the breadth of society – from the people making decisions to event attendees.
We work in locations that are accessible and encourage people to arrive by active travel and/or by public transport.
We offer different ticket price options for our events.
We are currently seeking grant funding to run targeted events in 2025 for marginalised people who might not otherwise hear about us, be unable to pay, or have specific needs. This includes people with disabilities and people new to the UK.
We plan to join Wildlife and Countryside Link’s EDI group.

What do you think?

Please get in touch if you would like to share feedback on this blog or our work. We welcome positive encouragement and constructive criticism. Wildlife and Wellbeing is a new project, and this is a sensitive topic. The more people who contribute, the better we can be.