When we published our Statement of Solidarity in June 2020 we committed to providing quarterly public updates on our progress and mistakes, to supplement the monthly internal updates we give our staff. This is the first of these.
When we drafted the initial statement we were acutely aware that there is a tension between wanting to do the deep, transformational work this topic requires and the legitimate desire among our colleagues, partners, and supporters for visible, accelerated progress. We would very much welcome feedback about whether we are getting that balance right.
Some examples of progress made so far include:
- Launching our Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) strategy, which was sponsored by our CEO and developed by a cross-organisational staff steering group, who worked closely with external experts, and embedded staff co-creation and engagement throughout the process.
- Publishing our data around the ethnic pay gap (which, to be transparent, is 4.9% according to mean salary and 2.1% according to median salary as of June 2020) and what we intend to do to close it.
- Producing content like this short film which doesn’t subject any children to the ‘white gaze’ of adults but treats all children as alike in their dignity and power. We’ve initiated a UK content guidelines review to make sure all our content is like this and are working with others across the Save the Children movement on a global review.
- Securing agreement across the global Save the Children family that we will spend $250k scoping where to go next on ‘localisation’ (the process of transferring power and resources to local organisations in the countries where we work) and agreeing now that it will be a top priority for the whole global organisation across our 2022-2024 strategy period.
- Producing our Covid’s Kids report with a strong focus on racial justice and wider questions of oppression.
- Updating our monitoring to be inclusive of Latin American colleagues.
- Appointing Jahnine Davis to our board of trustees, further strengthening our diversity at that level. While we compare favourably with the other top 50 fundraising charities (see more here), we still have work to do. We very much look forward to working with Jahnine, Kajal Odedra (our D&I trustee) and Charles Steel (our Interim Chair) on plans to ensure D&I are at the heart of the Board’s ways of working; and they will continue to hold us to account for making sure that all of our policies and processes deliver equality for marginalised groups across our workforce.
- Welcoming challenge from Show The Salary, signing the pledge and committing to transparency on the salary bands of all our advertised roles, including our Executive Directors.
We don’t, however, offer these with any sense of complacency. There remains a huge amount to be done as we learnt painfully when a colleague of colour who had been on a consultancy contract with us to work on our D&I strategy shared his negative experiences at Save the Children. The first and most important thing to say about that is his perspective is accepted without hesitation. That it was a surprise to us is as big a cause for concern as the content. Obliviousness is itself a privilege and this must lead to very deep reflection on our part.
As Executive Directors we have to take responsibility for repairing the harms done and must change based on this feedback. In practical terms we have decided to upgrade our D&I lead role to a Director-level position, with a team of three reports to lead the implementation of our D&I strategy.
We have also made a commitment to each other to spend the fourth Friday of every month reading and reflecting on anti-racism and wider D&I issues; discussing, learning and unlearning as a group; and action planning. We will work with the Corporate Senior Leadership Team (a group made up of all of our direct reports) to hold some externally facilitated coaching sessions and create space for challenging conversations.
We will publish our next quarterly update early in the new year. At that point we will be able to report back on the implementation of our D&I strategy, the induction of our new D&I Director, and progress on our all-staff learning sessions on decolonising development.
Save the Children UK’s Executive Leadership Team
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