Championing Diversity and Inclusion

I think increased awareness of the importance of inclusion is the result of a lot of hard work and advocacy by organisations like Help Age, Handicap International, CBM, Plan and IRC. There is now a large bank of evidence to demonstrate the current gaps. This has helped people understand how we can improve as a sector, and as individuals.

Advocating the inclusion of all genders, ages and people with disabilities is the responsibility of everyone. It requires openness, along with a willingness to learn and to adapt policies, practices and attitudes. External technical support is often required, and age- and disability-specific organisations are able to provide such support.

'Gender mainstreaming' is a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality throughout all aspects of an organisation or programme. This means that attention is paid to gender perspectives and the needs of different genders at every stage, regardless of the project goal or sector.

For example, if you're running a WASH project, your needs assessment should include the different needs of women, men, girls and boys. The programme should be designed to meet these different needs, and closely monitored throughout the implementation phase to check whether they are being met. What we refer to as a 'targeted approach' would be a programme which has a specific end goal of advancing gender equality: for example, RedR’s 'Gender, Age and Disability' course is a targeted approach to inclusion. In contrast to this, RedR’s 'Personal Security for Humanitarians' has inclusion mainstreamed throughout the course. A 'twin-track approach' - which is a mixture of these two approaches - is also applied in many programmes.

RedR UK is part of the ADCAP (Age and Disability Capacity-Building Programme) consortium, which has developed Minimum Standards for Age and Disability Inclusion in Humanitarian Action.

In 2016, we designed a new course called ‘Gender, Age and Disability’, which we’ve run twice in Nepal and once in Myanmar. We hope to be able to deliver it more widely in 2017. We delivered a training on Sphere and the ADCAP Minimum Standards in collaboration with ABS - this was a part of a 'training of trainers’ course, to help cascade the learning. In addition, RedR is looking at our own programmes and internally assessing how we can improve with regards to access and inclusion.

I would suggest that we all start by reflecting on our own actions. Are you working inclusively? Where are the barriers for people, and are you unintentionally contributing to them? How can they be removed? Part of this may be through just talking to people, learning about others' experiences and understanding how you can change your own actions, behaviours and attitudes to be more inclusive. You may also want to look at taking a course: there are some good, free online courses in this area. Other efforts could include seeking advice on proposals to ensure you have gender, age and disability inclusion mainstreamed in every programme.