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2023-03-31-accounts

Annual Report and Accounts

Charity Name: Equality Starts at Home

Charity Registration number: 1199288

Period Start to Period End: 13/06/2022 - 31/03/2023

Message from the Chair

I am delighted to share our first Annual Report since we became a charity in Jun 2022. Equality Starts at Home (ESAH) had been running as an informal initiative since 2020. I am proud of all the work we are delivering to raise awareness of inequality in the home space. We have only just become a charity so we do not have a set of annual accounts for the above financial year and we are under the threshold for reporting. Stand out moments for me in this period have been our wonderful safe space events including with WTW (Wills Towers Watson) for International Men’s Day in November 2022 and Age International in March 2023. And coming together with Thirdshift which accelerated our move to becoming a charity and enabled us to offer the household balance quiz to all on the new ESAH website and platform.

Charitable Objects

For the public benefit, the promotion of equality and diversity to anyone living with gender inequality in particular but not limited to, equality between women and men, by:

(a) the elimination of discrimination on the grounds of gender and gender inequality in the home (b) advancing education and raising awareness of all aspects of gender equality including through advocacy, publishing information in the media and through other means of communication

(c) promoting gender equal attitudes, customs and practices by creating materials, including but not limited to, tools, quizzes, assessments, training, safe space meetings, events, discussions and workshops

(d) conducting or commissioning research on equality and diversity issues and publishing the results to the public

(e) cultivating a sentiment in favour of equality and diversity

Our Vision, Mission and Values

Our Vision:

A world in which equality at home is a reality for all

Our Values:

Our Mission: To shift mind-sets and change behaviours to enable a greater sharing of the care, emotional and domestic responsibilities

Our Approach

Key achievements June 2022 - end March 2023

The following are our key achievements between June and end of March 2023 under our four strategic goals:

Goal #1 Create a movement for change

Since being formed (as an initiative) in 2020 ESAH has been facilitating safe space events. Since we became a charity in June 2022 we have provided the following events as an opportunity for people to learn, share and raise their awareness of inequalities in the home and how to tackle these issues in a ‘safe space.’ Through these events we have reached over 123 people.

Safe Space Events – open to all

June 2022 Fathers Day hosted by ESAH Trustee Jago Brown. This provided an opportunity to challenge male stereotypes around caring responsibilities and full household participation. We were delighted to receive a video message from Dan Flanagan Dad la Soul.

October 2022 International Mental Health Day hosted by ESAH Trustee Rita Kakati-Shah and featuring Dr Jacqueline Kerr talking about burnout in the home space.

November 2022 International Men’s Day a safe space discussion between Trustee Jago Brown and Men for Inclusion Champion Mark Freed about societal expectations of masculinity

In March 2023 for International Women’s Day the ESAH team was able to get together in person for the first time. Trustee Rita KakatiShah hosted a round table discussion on what #embracingequity means for us.

From left to right Drake Peabody, Rachel Akiboye, Clare Twelvetrees, Catherine McArthur, Rita Kakati-Shah and Frances Goodrum.

Events with Organisations

In November 2022 International Men’s Day, three of our trustees (Jago Brown, Jackie Carter, Rita Kakati-Shah), our Chair (Clare Twelvetrees) and our Director (Rachel Akiboye) contributed to a fantastic hybrid event with Wills Towers Watson (WTW) Men as Allies network , led and facilitated by Stuart Abraham. During this event ESAH shared the issue of inequality in the home and how it intersects with the work space – and what can be done differently to improve gender equality. Jago highlighted learning on gender pay gap work with LEAD5050. Over 90 staff attended, exploring and sharing stories around inequality in the home and how they intersect with work. Staff used the quiz and discussed their results. We saw an uplift of people taking the thirdshift quiz just before the event. We had 1,157 people taking the quiz peaking on 15th November where we had nearly half of the visitors for the month with 443 users and 553 sessions on that one day alone.

Feedback from participants during the WTW event included:

“The key thing for me was that the session established the importance of considering gender balance at home when trying to improve gender balance at work.”

“It was great to explore concepts like paid and unpaid work as it introduced us to new terms that will help us to have new conversations.”

‘I just had a call from one of our colleagues to let me know how engaging the team there found it. ….They used 30 minutes of their subsequent team meeting to continue the conversation. He also mentioned that there was a lot of buzz/ debate going on amongst the apprentices so it’s great to hear that it wasn’t just parents that felt it was relevant.’

In March 2023 our Chair Clare Twelvetrees ran a Gender Equality Session with Age International where she talked about her leadership journey and the importance of equality in the home. Staff took the quiz in advance and the findings fed into the rich cross cultural conversations about barriers to female leadership and gender equality in the workplace. It generated some fantastic debate and learning as people of all genders spoke with honesty about effects of gender stereotypes in the workplace such as flexible working traditionally being considered more ‘normal’ and acceptable as something that women do, and how it can be more difficult for men to ask for flexible working.

Social media campaigns and media highlights

Interviews in podcasts

In July 2022 Our Chair, Clare Twelvetrees was featured on Carla Millers Influence and Impact for female Leaders podcast talking about inequality in the home and encouraging listeners to test the split of household responsibilities through the quiz. (Earlier in the year, precharity registration, Clare had featured on Charlie Rossier’s Babbu podcast an tech entrepreneur and early years educator).

In February 2022, Jago Brown, Trustee featured in Dr Jacqueline Kerr’s podcast on overcoming working mom burnout.

Social media campaigns and engagement

In October 2022 we celebrated International Day of the Girl by publishing audio clips of trustees giving advice to their younger selves. In February 2023 we ran a Valentine’s Day poll. Throughout the year we published a wide range of social media posts amplifying voices around equality in the home and growing our linked in following to circa 500.

Goal #2 Change Systems and practices that perpetuate inequalities in the home

Within this goal we focussed on building relationships and partnerships with individuals and organisations who share or have a complementary mission to work on changing policies and practices that perpetuate inequality in the home for example the take up of shared parental leave, the cost of childcare and flexible working. Much of this work is through digital engagement. For example supporting Pregnant Then Screwed cost of Childcare campaign in Autumn 2022.

Goal #3 Empower people to create equality in their homes

Our ambition is to provide a digital knowledge hub which people can go to find out how to improve equality in their homes. We started with some top tips, case studies and stories. And in 2022 an amazing development was coming together with Thirdshift a technology platform which hosted a three part quiz which enabled people to test the split of household responsibilities in their home, providing a percentage and its equivalent monetary. We

revamped and moved our website to a platform that enabled us to host the quiz. The quiz had over 8,000 users in 2022 globally. This is a significant indicator of its demand and worth as it tests and uncovers with objectivity what is going on in peoples’ homes. It can be used as a conversation starter between people in households to start to address the balance. We will explore how to scale the quiz up in the coming years and harness the aggregated and non-personalised data to get a better understanding at scale of the inequality in homes to champion and highlight the change we seek to bring about.

Goal #4 Effective Organisation

We registered as a charity in June 2022 with six trustees (see list at end of report). We focussed in this period on effective governance and trustee oversight through board meetings. We also re-developed the website ready to move to a different platform (now www.equalitystartsathome.org, formerly .com). We re-branded and combined resources as we brought the Thirdshift tech hub under the umbrella of ESAH.

Priorities in 2023 – 24

Next year we will:

Equality Starts at Home would like to thank our partners and champions of gender equality who we have worked with this year.

Also a huge thank-you to our Director, Strategic Advisers, Co-Founders

Rachel Akiboye

Lesley Macniven

Drake Peabody

Helen Unwin

Venise Vinegar

And all the speakers who have led or participated in our events

Trustees (June 2022 – end Mar 2023)

Jago Brown

Jackie Carter

Clare Twelvetrees (Chair)

Frances Goodrum

Rita Kakati-Shah

Catherine McArthur

NB Any new trustees will recruited through an advertisement and interview process involving a small group of Trustees and the Chair.