Attitude

 

Attitude is often cited as one of the biggest barriers and underpins all the pillars of inclusion. Without doubt, a positive attitude goes a long way to making inclusion a reality.  

Translating positive attitudes into action can be challenging as sometimes people don’t recognize the behaviours that are excluding people in the first place. Some may be hesitant to change, while others might be protective of how the club is run and who it engages with.

Think about this and ask yourself – Can I see these habits and behaviours in my organisation? How do I feel about inclusion? Is my club ready to welcome people with disability or those from a different cultural background?

Your answer is probably ‘yes’, but the truth is that most people’s good intentions don’t often translate into action. If they did, the statistics above would look very different. Modifying policy, practices, processes and activities to become truly inclusive may seem like a huge task, but it doesn’t have to be.

The good news is that it just requires a slight attitude change; so it’s not necessarily “that anyone can join”, but refocusing on what you can do to actively encourage people to join or open up opportunities to those in your community to be a part of your club.

Why not tackle inclusion in stages? Talk about it, gather ideas and run an event that targets a particular population group in your community, for example, young children with disability, or new migrants and refugees. You can learn a lot from one event and it may not be as hard as you think.

Successful inclusion is about translating good attitudes into actions like these.

Watch the interview with Peter Downs.