Statement from Possible's co-directors on anti-oppression
As Possible’s co-leaders, our commitment to our equality, diversity, inclusion and anti-oppression work stems from our organisational commitment to climate justice.
As a British charity, we acknowledge the UK has made a disproportionately large contribution to historic carbon emissions and the cumulative amount of CO2 in our atmosphere. We know our country has significantly materially benefited from colonialism and extraction, which is why we have a responsibility to address how these continue to play out, including but not limited to radically slashing carbon emissions.
But to achieve our climate goals at the speed and scale required, people and communities must be at the very heart of ensuring the world we build is a fair one. Thus we believe we can not effectively work towards a just transition to a zero carbon society if we’re not also striving to dismantle the structures which oppress marginalised groups. We think about this in the way we do things internally with our staff, volunteers and trustees, as well as the way we work in the outside world with project participants, partner organisations and funders.
As co-directors, we each lead on implementing key strands of the anti-oppression strategy to ensure that this work becomes fully embedded across the organisation. We’ve made sure that our progress is discussed regularly with dedicated anti-oppression strategy meetings for SMT members, and anti-oppression updates at every board meeting. And we’ve also tried to model leadership by ensuring that we all attend each of our whole team training sessions on this agenda, and have learned lots by doing so.
We’re really proud of the work Possible has done on this so far but we know we have much further to go on our journey. So far, thinking about questions like how we can address the additional barriers that some people face because of their backgrounds, and how we can effectively share our organisational power, has been a valuable way to really look hard at how we operate. And we know that if we keep on asking ourselves these sorts of challenging questions we will keep learning and improving together, to get closer to Possible embodying true climate justice and building a zero-carbon, regenerative future of mutual thriving.
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