Our commitment to a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community business sector
News item
Co-operatives UK is jointly and publicly committing to advocating for and actively effecting a more diverse, equitable and inclusive co-operative and community business sector, alongside our partners, Power to Change, Locality and Plunkett Foundation.
Together, we provide support and funding to thousands of people in the sector every year, and influence government, which puts us in a position of power and privilege. Despite our good intentions, we have realised our organisations and the wider sector may inadvertently be excluding groups of people through unconscious bias and too many barriers to entry. This needs to change.
We’ve taken the first steps of acknowledging there is an issue, having difficult conversations and putting time and resource into taking action. We recognise we need to ‘get our own houses in order’ before we can start to positively influence and effect change in the sectors that we support. That’s why in 2020 we commissioned a joint review of our approaches to diversity, equality and inclusivity. We’re committed to turning those recommendations into action in 2021.
Rose Marley, CEO Co-operatives UK
Vidhya Alakeson, CEO Power to Change
Tony Armstrong, CEO Locality
James Alcock, CEO Plunkett Foundation
Working towards a more inclusive UK co-operative sector
Working towards a more inclusive UK co-operative sector
Diversity equity and inclusion
