I attended the annual SCMP Live DE&I Summit on behalf of Valley RFC which took place at quite some integral timing for the global landscape of DEI (20 Jan 2025)! As a sports club, ensuring our community’s sense of belonging is a key priority to our overall success, and as Valley leads into its 50th anniversary this year, we continue to enhance the Club's diversity, equity and inclusion to our best ability through our culture and values!

Here are a few prompts from the Summit that resonate with our own DEI compass:

∙How do we create ‘safer spaces’ to ensure team effectiveness and performance as well as wellbeing?
∙Are we encouraging a culture of feedback allowing members to be heard?
∙Are we investing to ensure the most inclusive environment for our community to know they can show up every day and express themselves authentically?
∙What’s the correlation between excellent sense of belonging and a high attrition rate?

Some striking quotes from speakers Raymond Co, Rishi N., Lesther Kelly Libarios and Brian Henderson (he/him) that can relate to a sports club:

∙“Managing an organisation is a retail business, not a wholesale business. Each member is an internal customer that is an individual. How do we personalise and humanise our approaches whilst scaling and pursuing success?”

∙“Trust is built when you are comfortable to ask for help, not just offering help.”

∙"Sometimes you need to just check in whether your counterpart wants to be heard or actually is seeking for your advice, because most times they know the solutions themselves, and they don't need you to solutionise!"

∙“In dealing with imposter syndrome, we need to realise that there are possibly many others out there struggling with similar challenges as us, and that DEI is not about us being judged for being different from the status quo."

Once again, a huge congratulations to all involved in the event and its far reaching impact, and for those interested in seeing how we channel these values into sport, do come down to Happy Valley for our final Club Day of this rugby season coming Saturday (22 Feb 2025)!