Xenia's anti-racism commitments.

The world owes a huge debt to the Black Lives Matter movement for creating much needed energy and education on the best ways to fight racism, including within organisational structures. 

Since last summer, the Xenia Organising Team, Trustees, and participants have been actively discussing anti-racism, trying to identify where we need to improve, how to do so, and taking action.  

We wanted to prioritise discussing and creating commitments, holding conversations about them with participants, and embedding them into our day-to-day work, before speaking about it externally. 

This blog will provide an overview of the work we have been doing since last Summer to move Xenia toward being a truly anti-racist organisation, and how we will carry this work forward.

Our anti-racism commitments

These commitments were created by Xenia staff, volunteers, and trustees. Those related to Xenia workshops were also shared with participants during workshops for thoughts and feedback. 

They will change, evolve, and be added to over time, with a formal review due to take place annually.

We have made these commitments to ensure Xenia continues always living its values - that everyone’s a student, everyone’s a teacher, and everyone is welcome.

1. In sessions, commit to using content, stories and objects that reflect women’s lives from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds.

2. Actively support staff, volunteers, and participants to take part in discussions, consultations and actions which challenge racism and/ or colonialism.

3. Recognise and break down power structures within workshops to ensure that all women, no matter their background or ethnicity, can share their experiences safely and openly.

4. Review our recruitment processes for staff, participants, and Organising Team members, including where we choose to advertise roles and the language used to describe Xenia, to ensure that our recruitment processes are accessible and inclusive to Black and Minoritised candidates.

5. Xenia welcomes people from all backgrounds and many different viewpoints, but we do not tolerate racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, religious discrimination, and other forms of discrimination. 

6. Change the language we use in our communications to be more boldly anti-racist. We commit to staying informed about language, its current use, and the impact it has. 

7. Insist on equal representation on platforms we take part in, such as events and panels.

8. Listen to and learn from participants, partners, supporters, and team members with lived experience of racism and provide opportunities for them to share this safely. 

9. Re-imagine our structure to recognise that our non-hierarchical organising methods, which include a significant amount of voluntary work, can be exclusionary and that volunteering is a privilege. We also recognise that volunteering can provide many benefits and we want to make that opportunity open to everyone.

10. Monitor demographic data in a way that we haven’t previously as a grassroots group, as information is key to recognising where we need to do better. 

11. Review progress against these commitments with Trustees every Quarter and release external statements annually to ensure our commitment to being an anti-racist, anti-oppression organisation is a long term one.

12. The Organising Team and the Trustee Board commit to improving our own personal understanding and relationship to power and privilege.

Progress so far

Achievements

Xenia has always stood for creating welcoming spaces and breaking down power structures in workshops. But this is the first time we’ve proactively, explicitly committed to and monitored anti-racism actions. To ensure we hold ourselves to account and continuously reflect on our progress, each commitment is assigned a lead staff member or volunteer. 

Progress is reviewed at our monthly Organising Team meetings and reported to Trustees quarterly. This means that staff and volunteers are committing their time to embedding anti-racism in our work now and in the future.

We have also held successful workshops which directly discuss and challenge racism and / or colonialism. This is something we shied away from in the past, due to hesitation from facilitators who were concerned that it might be a triggering topic for some participants.

Facilitators have been working together to better prepare for such sessions and participants have been incredibly engaged in and passionate about these discussions. We will continue to lead workshops which help us all to learn about racism, equity, and power.

Xenia is a community developed by all the women who take part; so far, we have run two sessions with participants about how Xenia can become a truly anti-racist organisation. We discussed the anti-racism commitments which are connected to how we run sessions. Participants shared insightful feedback, as well as ideas for how we can better meet our commitments, which we have already taken on board. 

Challenges

As a small charity, capacity is one of the biggest barriers we face to making more progress, quicker. For example, our Outreach Organiser has the expertise and experience to improve how we collect feedback from participants, to ensure that all women, no matter their background or ethnicity, can share their experiences safely and openly. However, due to the capacity of the role (the Organiser works one day a week) this has been on hold while they prioritise supporting new and existing participants, as we move from virtual to in-person sessions. 

Some of our commitments are long-term and will take time to achieve. Number nine commits to organising in an equitable and inclusive way which gives power and voice to Xenia participants. We recognise, for instance, that the voices of women of colour have been disproportionately absent from official decision-making within Xenia. We have taken actions to address this, such as changing the way we recruit for trustees and staff, creating an equalities policy, and embedding anti-racism commitments into our three-year strategy. 

But we need to continue working to understand, assess and act on the power dynamics within our organisation and the sector we work in, and to ensure the voices of women we seek to support have power and representation at all levels of the organisation.

You can find a detailed report of actions taken against each of our commitments so far, here.

Have thoughts? Get in touch!

We would love to hear from you about your experiences with Xenia and how we can improve the way we work.

If you have any questions or want to talk to us about this work, please get in touch with us: welcome@xenia.org.uk.