How to ensure representation of diverse perspectives across the farming sector, and monitoring, measuring, and evaluating equality, diversity, and inclusion
At the turn of the year, the Social Justice & Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Topic Advisory Group hosted two virtual events which offered learning opportunities in exploring, and developing understanding of the theme of representation of diverse perspectives across the farming sector. The aim of these webinars was to raise awareness, encourage self-reflection and inspire confidence in engaging with and implementing meaningful actions on the theme above across the delegates own career, sphere of influence and day-to-day workflows and processes. The events brought together delegates from academia, industry, and third sectors to foster networking, knowledge exchange, and collaboration across the Land Use community.
Click here to watch event one: ‘How to ensure representation of diverse perspectives across the farming sector in stakeholder workshops and other engagement. What are best practices and what does good look like‘
Click here to watch event two: ‘Monitoring, Measuring, and Evaluating EDI‘
Event Objectives:
• Increase understanding of diversity and representation in stakeholder engagement in the land use sector, and monitoring, measuring, and evaluating equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)
• Inspire delegates to reflect on their engagement with these themes in their own careers and workflows • Inspire confidence in implementing meaningful action related to their own project objectives
• Facilitate collaboration and knowledge exchange among participants from academia, industry and the third sector.
• Promoting actionable change, through the encouragement of delegates in implementing actions in their own sphere of influence and working processes.
Discussing the objectives of these events, Dr Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, lead of the Social Justice & Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Topic Advisory Group said:
“More and more, UK funding bodies are pushing for strong involvement of practitioners in the research process and engagement with industry, civil society organisations and policy actors. This is a fantastic direction of travel, but we also need to make sure that we are being inclusive in this approach to engage more widely and deeply and representing diverse voices and experiences in this process. Oftentimes, research colleagues lack the tools for embedding equity, diversity and inclusivity in their practices. The EDI workshops were designed to address this skill gap and to provide support to colleagues working in the food and farming sectors to ensure representation across their engagement activities. We will continue to develop tools to provide this support and bridge the gap in skills and knowledge around EDI.”Dr Angelina Sanderson Bellamy
The first webinar was facilitated by Navaratnam Partheeban. Being a farm vet, Navaratnam (Theeb) enjoys working with British livestock farmers in improving health, welfare, sustainability and production of their animals around the UK. His roles have varied from clinical practice, university higher education teaching, pharmaceutical industry and technical consultancy with a global animal health company. Theeb has just recently completed a 3-year role on the Board of Directors for the Oxford Farming Conference and is also a Board Member of the British Cattle Veterinary Association and a Governor at Harper Adams University. Theeb is dedicated in working to support the sector in helping attract people from non-traditional backgrounds and is co-founder of British Veterinary Ethnicity and Diversity Society (BVEDS). He has been involved and is working on a number of projects to support this value, including his newly launched AgDiversity Online EDI training course for the farm sector.
Event two was facilitated by Mac Alonge. Mac is an experienced strategic and regulatory consultant, having spent the last 10 years working within the energy and utilities industry. Over the last 10 years as a regulatory focused consultant within the energy and utilities industries, Mac has worked with and for some of the world’s largest private and public sector organisations, including the likes of KPMG, National Grid, Scottish Power, Capita and the Scottish and UK governments. Throughout his career, Mac has observed that there are numerous barriers within the workplace that prevent organisations from truly reaping the benefits that come from embracing greater levels of equality, diversity and inclusion. Mac’s mission is to ensure that the current generation leaves a legacy whereby equality and inclusion are the new ‘norm’ and individual differences are respected and valued. Mac was an integral part of introducing the energy and utility sector’s first cross industry diversity and inclusion measurement framework. He works extensively with CEOs and Executive Leadership Teams on understanding equality, diversity and inclusion and is focused on the holistic implementation of measurable and sustainable, high impact equality, diversity and inclusion interventions. Mac and The Equal Group are focused on providing forward thinking organisations with the tools and support that they need to optimise their equality, diversity and inclusion efforts.
Dr Angelina Sanderson Bellamy
EDI and Social Justice
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