As the instigators of the Your Movement Matters research project, we’re pleased to be sharing the results and thinking about our next steps.

Education and training

Today, 25th January, all Mountain Training staff based at Siabod Cottage are attending a day of equity, diversity and inclusion training. We are committed to educating ourselves and our workforce to better understand the lived experiences of those who are marginalised and regular staff training on this topic is now part of our forward plan. As employees of the national Mountain Training organisations we all have interactions with course directors and staff as well as with current and prospective candidates – these interactions have the potential to support and inspire many thousands of individuals so it is important that we lead by example.

Our commitment to education extends to the course directors and staff who deliver our qualifications and skills courses. They are the people who spend time with candidates, training and assessing them to be independent participants and in many cases qualified leaders. Each national Mountain Training organisation has its own strategic plan in this area and works with stakeholders and their respective sports councils to achieve their goals.

Improving the diversity of people

All of the national Mountain Training organisations are committed to an equitable approach to recruiting new employees and non-executive directors. We are working hard to diversify where we place our job adverts and welcome applications from individuals from marginalised groups. We want jobseekers to view us as an inclusive employer and will seek to improve the way we communicate this at every stage of the recruitment journey. Some recent feedback has prompted us to understand the potential talent we might miss out on if we’re not clear about our commitment to inclusivity and we will work to address this in future rounds of recruitment. View our current vacancies.

Holding ourselves accountable

Our intention when we began this project was to better understand how representative our qualification holders are of the people participating in the various styles of walking, climbing and mountaineering. As we explore the research results from Your Movement Matters and compare them to the demographics of our candidates, we will be able to identify which groups are not appropriately represented and where there are gaps in the data due to the information we currently have about our candidates.

We expect to publish these results by the summer of 2022.

Developing collaborative relationships

This project, thanks to its very existence, has brought us closer to the organisations with whom we’re already aligned. We aim to work with these organisations to reduce barriers at all stages of the participant and leader pathway through greater cooperation and collaboration in the future.

The obvious next step is to create new and stronger links with community groups and individuals who can help us understand the experience of Mountain Training from a marginalised person’s perspective so that we can improve our communication messages and methods.

We are working to explain in plain English, Mountain Training courses and qualifications so that anyone with an interest in furthering their participation or becoming a leader, instructor or coach, can find the information they need and join the appropriate scheme.