Aspire stands in solidarity with our BAME colleagues and beneficiaries at Aspire, the BAME community in Oxfordshire, across England and around the world, who too often face being marginalised and discriminated against.

While words of solidarity can be powerful, we acknowledge that real, meaningful change in the fight against racism will only come about through each of us taking action. 

Aspire strives to be an organisation that is inclusive, anti-racist and free of prejudice and intolerance. We need to increase our understanding of these issues, pledge to challenge ourselves to drive change, take a stand against structural racism whenever we encounter it, and to proactively include and empower people of colour.

As a first step, we will work to do more within our organisation to help break down the barriers still faced by too many people. This includes revisiting our own recruitment practices at Aspire, for example to introduce a blind recruitment process to ensure we are evaluating people only on their skills and experience.

We will also ask our inclusivity working group to support us to co-produce clear milestones to invest in and achieve in the weeks, months and years ahead, as we strive to improve.