Diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) are principles at the heart of the Big Issue Invest and Big Issue Group’s mission.
At The Big Issue, our mission is to Build a world that works for everyone. Challenging, innovating and creating self-help and sustainable business solutions, that dismantle poverty now and for future generations.
We need to engrain the principles of DEI into our everyday business activities in order to be actively aware of where we need to improve and how we can better listen to those we are seeking to serve. It is important for us now and for future generations that DEI is built into the way we do business.
As a social investor, it is important that we are ensuring our funds are accessible and inclusive of different communities and individual needs. This means Big Issue Invest needs to do more. We need to take extra steps to ensure that marginalised and disadvantaged leaders of social purpose organisations, and the individuals within these communities, are able to access our funds. We also need to critically assess ourselves and where we have, unwittingly or not, placed structural, financial or social barriers for people in accessing investment, dismantle these.
We must take positive action to measure ourselves against these commitments. This is why we are developing an Implementation and Policy Action Plan which will outline the concrete steps that we will be taking to truly embed DEI into our actions. This includes:
- monitoring the diversity of our investment portfolios;
- setting targets on DEI in our outreach, investment and recruitment activities;
- embedding DEI principles and lessons into all future products;
- creating space for people with lived experience, disabilities, from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, and using our platform to bring these voices to the forefront; and,
- learning from and sharing best practice as a social investor
We are currently undergoing a data monitoring exercise to benchmark the diversity of our portfolio. We will hold ourselves accountable to these commitments and publish how we are doing internally and externally in future annual impact reports.
