Sustain publishes progress report on diversity and anti-racism

Sustain staff members, alliance members and many other people in the food system have a profound commitment to promoting equity and justice, meaning we want to promote diversity and inclusion across a wide range of characteristics. As part of this we are working towards being explicitly anti-racist and consciously working to remove oppressive and excluding attitudes and practices. We recognise there are entrenched and structural causes of inequality and so want to play a part in tackling these, and to be allies to people and organisations leading the way. In particular, we recognise the extent and depth of racial inequality and racial injustice in the food system and want to do what we can to help address this.

Sustain has adopted a ‘spheres of influence’ model to guide our work on diversity and anti-racism. This helps us think through how we can change ourselves and the organisation, as well as to use our privileged position to influence change more widely. We challenge ourselves to think: What unique privileges, platforms and opportunities does Sustain have to help tackle the root causes of inequality in the food and farming system?

Download Sustain’s progress on diversity and anti-racism: Our annual progress report on Sustain’s work to improve diversity, equalities and inclusion, and to promote racial justice.

This report documents what Sustain has been doing over the past year on diversity, equality, inclusion and racial justice. We are publishing it to:

• Be open and transparent about what we are doing; and be open to being challenged.
• Encourage momentum and participation in our sector, and to be involved in the sharing of good ideas and knowledge about how to bring about positive changes.

Sustain has allocated budget and staff time to enable progress on the matters outlined in this progress report; and will continue to do so. We commit to continuous improvement, remaining open to change, and to ideas, challenges and constructive criticism. We will monitor and report on our progress; learn by doing; and not be afraid to try things out or get things wrong. We will acknowledge and learn from our mistakes.

As well as reporting progress, as part of this commitment we have asked several members of staff to provide personal reflections on barriers to change they have encountered and what stands in the way of us making greater progress on these important issues. These personal reflections are included within the text of this report and will help to inform our learning.