Irise International
Shortlist – Board Diversity and Inclusivity
Who they are
Irise International is an award-winning, global leader in menstrual health programming, research, advocacy and policy development, transforming peoples’ lives through period equality. The charity’s vision is a world where everyone can realise their potential, unlimited by their periods. It delivers practical programmes, produces innovative research and advocacy for policy and practice change. Irise believes that when society is led by young women and girls, and informed by robust evidence, then long-lasting social change can be achieved. The charity’s strategic plan has three strands: (1) creating holistic, community-led solutions to period inequality that tackle period shame; (2) sharing learning to build the capacity of other stakeholders to address this issue across cultures and disciplines; (3) shaping policy and practice through evidence-based, beneficiary-led advocacy.
What they’ve achieved
Diversity at Irise means bringing together different experiences, skills and perspectives under a shared vision. It goes beyond ensuring representation of difference and is rooted in the belief that transformative leadership can only happen in an environment where the diversity of the people the charity serves and stakeholders the charity needs to engage is reflected in the diversity of experience at the leadership table. For Irise, diversity at board level means a richer and more meaningful dialogue that can nurture innovation and disrupt harmful social norms about who should lead. The board includes trustees with lived experience of poverty and period shame in the UK and East Africa as well as professionals with diverse experience of academia, the public, private, and third sectors. It includes young people, women with children, and students because people from these groups have the unique experiences the organisation needs.
Creating a more diverse and inclusive board has directly led to the development of the two approaches critical for realising the impact of our 2019-2024 Strategy: Transforming Stigma, Realising Potential. These are (1) to build Irise as an institution that belongs to the young women it serves, enabling it to become a resource for them to realise the social changes they wish to see; and (2) to bridge the gaps between the third sector, academia and policymakers so that learning can be generated and leveraged to institutionalise the changes needed to realise period equality for everyone.
With the first approach, Irise enabled the young people already involved in its work and affected by period inequality to take a more active leadership role within the organisation. This was accomplished by recruiting an Advocacy Trustee and enabling her to create and chair an Advocacy Committee focussed on organising and growing the Advocacy Network. The Advocacy Committee has developed its own strategy (sitting within the organisation’s broader strategic framework) to end period shame in the UK within a generation; it secured £100,000 from the Act for Change fund to build a movement to achieve this.
With the second approach, Irise recruited trustees from different sectors to join the board, enabling the charity to play a unique role in bringing together different menstrual health stakeholders, building consensus about best practice and influencing policy. Irise is now a key player on the UK government’s Period Poverty Taskforce and are working with stakeholders across East Africa.
Why they were shortlisted
The Irise board encompasses both young women with lived experience of their purpose and professionals with skills to support the organisation, helping the charity enact their two strategies for social change: leadership by those affected by the issue combined with robust evidence of what works. Judges saw evidence on building leadership among non-traditional leaders, including a cascade mentorship initiative where everyone involved in the organisation is encouraged to mentor somebody else. Irise uses a range of methods to ensure that all board members can participate in discussions, including thinking strategically about the commitment trustees can take on around other responsibilities and making meetings more accessible through virtual conferences as well as in-person activities.
