Chevening’s Commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Chevening celebrates the enormous diversity of its alumni networks and each scholar cohort which arrives in the UK. Chevening is committed to:

1. Attracting a diverse range of candidates to the programme, and ensuring our application and selection processes are open, accessible and fair.
2. Ensuring that our scholars and fellows have an excellent experience while in the UK. This includes providing support for:
3. any instances of harassment or discrimination that they may experience
4. any accessibility requirements they may have.
5. Working to build a diverse, positive and open-minded Chevening community in the UK and around the world, which embodies values such as tolerance and inclusion, and which contributes to international collaboration.

In 2020 Chevening implemented a two-year equality and diversity action plan to explore how we can continue to improve support for our diverse community. During these two years we:

• Improved our understanding of and sought to reduce barriers within the application and selection process through consulting applicants and scholars and providing training for assessors and interviewers.
• Completed a mapping exercise informed by surveys, focus groups and case studies to understand our awardees’ experiences of discrimination or harassment in the UK.
• Developed recommendations regarding actions we can take to support awardees through instances of harassment and discrimination, and how we can minimise instances of it within the Chevening community.
• Worked with our partners to share and improve understanding of the experiences of international postgraduate scholarship students and the challenges they face.
• Introduced training for the 2022 cohort of scholars in diversity, equality and consent.

Equality, diversity and inclusion continues to be a priority and in 2023 we set out to:

• Review all key policies relating to this area, such as Codes of conduct, disciplinary and safeguarding policies.
• Continue reviewing accessibility of systems and processes.
• Ensure we learn from the UK university community and draw on cross-sector best practise of student support and incident response.
• Deliver communications and events which are inclusive, accessible and celebrate diversity.