Mission:

Together Equal aims to create equality for all by creating conversations that build and challenge awareness of the inequalities prevalent in society. 

We believe that conversation should be aimed at building a foundation for the future, and that’s where our content comes in. We created tools which enable everyone to have meaningful conversations, and to connect with each other.

About Us:

We are a Profit-With-Purpose dedicated to running programmes to give all children and young adults an equal start in life. As a company, we feel that conversation is essential to forming key connections with those around you. To facilitate this, we created Conversation Cards. We view these as their own tool, which are designed to challenge social stereotypes.

Our School Programme is aligned with the PSHE curriculum and works with primary and secondary schoolchildren focusing on school/group level challenges rising from inequality within their own community. The primary school module is aimed at helping younger kids recognise positive and negative behaviours over a range of topics, from toxic masculinity, to bullying, and building positive behaviours. Our work with secondary schools is a lot more bespoke; we work with small groups of students to help them feel empowered to make the right decisions about their approach to school, helping them understand their own accountability in their daily actions.

To help fund our activities, we created Conversation Cards for families with kids age 7+ to encourage conversation and debate about equality. We sell these directly to raise money to subsidise our work with schools, but we also work with a number of charities who sell them directly, keeping all the profits raised, to enable them to continue supporting victims of domestic abuse.

Context:

Together Equal’s work is meeting a conspicuous need.  Although we want ultimately to have an impact across the globe, our primary focus, at least over the next few years, is the UK.  

We know we live in a very unequal society in the UK. This inequality manifests itself in multiple ways. Financial disparity is just one aspect. Recent data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reveals that, in the financial year ending 2020, the income of the richest 20% of people was over six times higher than the poorest 20%, while the richest 10% received 50% more income than the poorest 40%.

This is compounded by entrenched and pervasive discrimination. As just one illustration of this, rates of prosecution and sentencing for black people in the UK are three times higher than for white people, 18 per thousand population compared with six per thousand population for white people.

The issue of racial inequality in particular has been brought into sharp focus at a global level through the recent killing of George Floyd in America. 

Gender inequality is also on the increase.  Research carried out by The World Economic Forum shows that the gender wage gap in the UK is 16%, compared with 7% in Sweden and Norway. In the UK, more than three times the number of women are in part-time roles compared with men.

Incidents of hate crime have risen dramatically over recent years, especially since the EU Referendum in 2016. Transgender identity hate crimes increased by 37% in 2017-2018 in England and Wales. The Home Office figures also recorded a 25% rise in offences linked to sexual orientation while disability hate crimes rose by 14%.

Critically, inequality affects all people within society regardless of their income.

Unequal societies have less social mobility as people are not able to reach their full potential, and these societies also tend to have higher crime rates.

Inequality can harm an individual’s physical and mental health, dignity and self-esteem.

On average people in deprived neighbourhoods in the UK live seven years less than people in wealthier neighbourhoods. 

 Britain’s most socially excluded groups are 10 times more likely to die early than the general population, according to research undertaken by University College London (UCL) in 2017.  The research findings, which were published in The Lancet, demonstrate that inequality is more pronounced than is documented. Its lead author, Dr Robert Aldridge (UCL Institute of Health Informatics), said the disparity exposed “something toxic in our society”.

Equality is also key to fundamental aspects of human life such as trust, participation, attitudes and happiness. Research shows, by way of illustration:

• People in European countries with higher levels of inequality are less likely to help each other in acts of altruism.

• Unequal societies have lower rates of both social and civic participation, including lower engagement with political parties. 

• Inequality erodes trust and stops people from developing strong inter-relationships. This in turn prevents the development of the sort of support networks that help improve a person’s health.

Banner Photo by Karen Maes on Unsplash