EDI Focus Group

[ruairidhmckay]

Hello all,

Over the last year, an EDI (equality, diversity & inclusion) focus group has been started (in tandem with another focus group seeking views from female chess participants) as part of Chess Scotland's goals to actively promote diversity and inclusion within the Scottish chess community.

One of the group's aims is to work on a process by which the representation and views of the wider Scottish chess community can be sought around topics including the nature of our chess community and how accepting, tolerant and respectful the community culture is of people with different views and from different backgrounds. There are many positive things that have been reflected on in the focus group but it would be helpful to know whether this is reflected more widely.

If you are interested in joining our work, it would be great to hear from you! Our next meeting is on the 16th of September. Please feel free to get in touch with me, Ruairidh McKay, Chess Scotland Administration Director (& currently Diversity Officer as well but it would be great to think about delegating this to somebody else at some point!). Either private message me on the forum or alternatively, my email address is in the Contacts section of the website.

[Jim Webster]

Hi Ruairidh

It may be worth adding a brief description of what the expectations are for a Diversity Officer.

Jim

[ruairidhmckay]

Thanks Jim,

In July 2022, there was an independent review published into racism in Scottish Cricket. SportScotland generally hold the values and themes of the report to be relevant across all Scottish sports & games organisations.

There were 31 Indicators of Institutional Racism put forward in the review. One of the "Indicators" on which Chess Scotland fell short at the time of the report was having an "EDI champion at Board level". Amongst other things, such an EDI champion should be allowed to provide leadership along with other Chess Scotland postholders with regard to the following aims:

1) Incidents of racism managed effectively
2) Effective governance on anti-racism and EDI
3) Visible Leadership on anti-racism and EDI
4) A diverse Chess Scotland 'workforce'
5) The ongoing development of an inclusive culture

In the context of this, the creation of the post of Diversity Officer to work on these aims is welcome.

It makes sense for any successor to the post to naturally come from within the focus group that has started to reflect on how we currently fare in the Scottish chess community with regard to this and how we could continue to develop with regards to our values of inclusivity and respect. I would therefore expect anybody who may be interested in the post to first of all join the group and its work and we could then go from there. 

Hope this helps.

Ruairidh