Diversity, equity and Inclusion Policy

As an organisation committed to equality, diversity and inclusion, TSIP recognises and embraces the diverse skills and perspectives that people bring through their gender, origin, ethnicity, culture, disability, age, sexual orientation, and/or religious beliefs and how these characteristics may intersect. Diversity also encompasses the many ways people differ in terms of their education, life experience, job function, work experience, socio-economic status, location, relationship status, and career and home responsibilities.  

We ourselves are a diverse team of technical and community specialists that support our partners to engage communities and stakeholders in the design and delivery of various funds and programmes, which at their very heart, are about widening access, inclusion and addressing issues of power. Trust is essential when it comes to successful engagement, especially when considering the sensitive topic of racial inequity. To do this effectively, we will bring our own lived experiences to the facilitation of focus groups, whilst supporting the creation of safe spaces to gather insight. 

Crucially, we bring diverse perspectives, insights and approaches to tackle systemic challenges and ensuring lived experience leadership throughout our work with our partners. We recognise that lived experience comes in many different forms, and that people who are from a similar background will also have different perspectives from each another. 

Within all our work, we aim to:

• Create safe spaces with stakeholders to share their views and ensure that we collectively define what shared terms and phrases used during projects means to each of us.

• Ensure we ask and understand what participants can give and what they need to ensure that they feel safe.

• Communicate and demonstrate our key values of diversity, empathy, creativity, collaboration, and impact in each of our interactions.

• Ensuring there is always someone available to address discomfort within any of our sessions and making that clear to the participants at the start of every session.

• Provide alternative forms of engagement for participants to contribute to our work where they don’t feel comfortable with the option offered.

• We try to use an approach that offers opportunities for reflexivity on the part of clients and evaluators alike. We will regularly reflect on our own biases, assumptions and positionality and articulate how these inform our insights.

• Our diverse team will challenge each other & those we work with to explore the information we gather from a range of perspectives, with a deliberate inquiry into what we might be missing at each stage.