Vision
Water is used wisely, every day, everywhere, by everyone.
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Statement
At Waterwise, we’re committed to driving equity and preventing discrimination in all the work we do and in the workplace. We know that simply having a diverse workforce is not enough. We want to create an inclusive environment within Waterwise, and in our work and events, where everyone can contribute their best and develop to their full potential. We celebrate and value how different everyone is, and we work hard to ensure everyone is treated with dignity and respect. This aligns with our ‘People’ value that we will prioritise staff wellbeing, and will be an inclusive, kind and positive team.
A great deal of our impact is delivered in partnership. We commit to engaging and collaborating with a wider range of communities, to help deliver climate justice and social justice through water efficiency. We will use our independence to drive more equity, diversity and inclusion in the environment and water sectors, positively influencing where we can.
What we’re doing already
We are taking steps when we recruit such as anonymous applications and focusing on skills and not just experience, to debias our recruitment and selection for the Waterwise Board and staff team. We have ringfenced roles for disabled applicants only. We were selected for the first cohort of organisations in the Pathways to Trusteeship programme for young people of colour. We do not allow all-white or all-male panels at our events. We measure the diversity of our Board and staff team annually and we have measures in place to drive and measure inclusion at work, and how it feels to work here. We have equity, diversity and inclusion champions both in the staff team and on our Board. We seek to ensure a wider range of perspectives at our events and have been measuring what our impact has been on this, which will inform our future work. We factor climate justice into our work streams. We updated our vision to make clear that it includes everyone. We have had some success on EDI but have more to do, and are committed to proactive work and continuous learning.
Next steps
We commit in 2025 to
Continue to measure the diversity of perspectives at our events and use this to set targets, building on our existing commitment to no all-male or all-white panels.
Embed inclusion more into our internal work and day-to-day activities; and obtain more data on this by tracking over time against more nuanced measurements and feedback strands in our staff surveys and exit surveys, drawing on good practice.
Widen our approach and reach on recruitment. Using the analytics for all stages of our previous recruitments and advice from our recruiters, increase the diversity of applicants and appointments.
Ensure we are capturing the diversity of the audience that we reach – using this to create a baseline to set targets for improvement.
Measure the diversity of participants who attend Waterwise training, including the Water Literacy Programme pilot which will run throughout 2025 – using this to create a baseline to set targets for improvement.
Ensure that all Waterwise events are fully accessible and inclusive. While this should be standard practice, we recognise that not all organisations do it.
Work harder to ensure inclusivity in our communications.
This EDI statement and our wider EDI policy will be reviewed on an annual basis. We will report against this and the existing measures set out above early 2026, when we will also publish our 2026 EDI Statement.
Last updated: March 2025
As part of our ongoing commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, we are happy to share that we are also members of Race Equality Matters – learn more about the organisation here.
