Charity Digital - How to Make your Inclusion Intersectional, November 2022

National Newscaster Charity Digital have produced practical guidance and advice to help charities put in place a more inclusive approach in their help and support for others in community.

Diversity is not a straightforward issue.

Organisations have been and continue to make worthwhile efforts to represent the communities they operate and work in. But many still approach their efforts in distinct and singular ways.

They will approach consideration solely whether it’s to support through characteristics of race, or through gender, through ethnicity, by age or sexuality, or even through disability.

However, any number of these categories can and will overlap and intersect.

Intersectionality
In the very late 1980s, a legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw wrote a paper coining the term ‘intersectionality’. Initially, it was a way to explain the oppression of African-American women.

The paper observes it’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, then a gender problem there, and a class problem here or LGBTQ problem there.

Crenshaw describes intersectionality as “..a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects..”

The term has been used ever since, and even today it still has as much relevance as it did back then.

Many organisations have made good progress in improving the diversity of support and services they offer, not only for the people they help but also in their workforce of recent years.

But what more can be done to understand and embrace intersectionality to further improve the experience for all?

National Newscaster Charity Digital tackle this subject, providing a better explanation about intersectionality.

They also offer practical actions charities can take to put in place an intersectional approach to inclusion.

To read the guidance, visit the Charity Digital website.

MVA continues its efforts to provide coverage of local and national news and events from the Voluntary and Charity Sector.

If you would like to see coverage of specific news or subject to help your charity, your project, your community group or enterprise, you can get in touch by email at info@mva.org.uk, you can also contact MVA via the website.