Our Inclusivity Commitment

Lonely Goat is open to people of all backgrounds. More importantly than just being open, we want to be truly inclusive so that everyone feels welcome. This Inclusivity Commitment highlights how we hope to do that. 

Our club values are to support and inspire each other to achieve our personal health and fitness goals. This is a key part of our mission and we want everyone to feel part of it, regardless of race, gender, age, sexuality, nationality, body type, running ability, or anything else.

If anyone feels unwelcome, or that this community isn’t open to them, that’s a failure on our part. To guard against this, we have taken steps to encourage diverse representation and inclusivity, as we know under-representation of different people can lead to an exclusive environment – even if that is unintentional. 

However, the Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted to us that there is still work to do.

We exist for any runner who embraces our club ethos, yet minority ethnic people, for example, are currently under-represented within our community. It would be easy for us to say this reflects the under-representation within the UK recreational running scene more generally, and therefore isn’t our fault, but that’s not good enough.

We have an opportunity and a responsibility to help correct under-representation within our club, and the wider running community. We need to actively encourage inclusivity and guard against any unconscious bias, to be truly open and welcoming to all.

Our plan

Below are actions we are taking to improve the inclusivity of Lonely Goat, and encourage ethnic minority people and others, such as disabled or LGBTQIA+ people, to become runners.

Diverse representation

We can make sure under-represented people are able to see themselves reflected in our content, eg:

• ‘In the Pen’
• ‘Goats on the Run’
• ‘Goat Mail’ newsletter
• The guest bloggers we feature
• The imagery we use
• The articles we produce.

The more diverse the selection of people we include, the more we do to create a community in which all people feel welcome.

A safe environment

We need to continue creating a safe environment for people to engage with each other. This means making it easy for people to let us know about any actions that make others feel uncomfortable or unwelcome (whether this be related to race, gender, sexuality, running ability, or any other factor).

To achieve this, we will continue monitoring our online environments and supporting our moderators. Please remember, you can ‘flag’ any content you are concerned about within our social media channels, or email info@lonelygoat.com. Please be assured, we will take your concerns seriously and act promptly.

Constructive collaborations

We will seek out individuals, organisations, advocacy groups and like-minded brands to learn from and collaborate on actions that we couldn’t achieve on our own.

Diverse recruitment

We will consider our own inherent biases and ensure any recruitment or partnerships are not discriminatory or exclusionary.

Have conversations with the people that matter the most

We will devise and launch a formal plan to engage with our members and seek their input on both inclusivity and other matters relating to the community, eg: focus groups and surveys.

Our shop

We are working to improve the range of merchandise sizes available in our shop. We don’t want anyone to feel excluded from Lonely Goat because their body type is not accommodated.

Thank you for being part of Lonely Goat

Without our members, Lonely Goat would not be the incredible community that it is. We consider the points above to be the first stage of an ongoing commitment. Some of these actions are happening already; others are starting to happen now; others will take a while longer; and some will naturally lead onto new actions. This is a continual process of action and assessment.

We will let you know how we’re getting on as we want to be transparent and open about what we’re doing. After all, if we share what we’re doing to improve, that might help others to improve too. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this statement.

The LG Team