Celebrating our Voices EDI group

What was the project about?

It’s important that your diverse voices are heard. We want everyone affected by breast cancer to be able to get involved in projects or research as much as they want to.

We need to make it easy for people from diverse backgrounds to get involved with Breast Cancer Voices in ways that work for them. To make this happen, we wrote an EDI plan in 2024 which outlined how we aim to do this.  

We want to make sure that we hear from you about what matters to you and what you need. So, an important part of our EDI plan was to set up an EDI group with our Voices. We wanted this group to help us improve the way we run Breast Cancer Voices and make it an accessible and inclusive community.

How did Voices get involved?

We set up the EDI group in January 2025 with 4 of our Voices. Together, we looked at what areas were important to improve over the next 6 months, and made a plan for how to do it.

We met online for 2 hours every month. In our meetings, we covered different topics such as:

• How we communicate with you
• What accessible projects look like 
• How to improve how you get feedback and updates about projects

We’re really grateful to the Voices in the group for their openness, dedication to improving things, and willingness to challenge us where we need to do better.

What’s happened so far?

Over the past 6 months, we’ve made changes to make sure that Voices can find opportunities that are relevant to them more easily. We’ve also improved the way we ask for feedback and share updates about projects. And we've updated our guidance for staff to make it clear how to make opportunities accessible and inclusive. 

Here are some specific actions we've taken: 

• Updating the bulletin to add a ‘jump to opportunities’ button and changing how we use categories for opportunities
• Updating our guidance for staff to make it clearer what our expectations are, especially around how to make opportunities accessible
• Improving how we ask project leads for feedback and share updates with you, so you hear more consistently about the impact you’re having in the projects you’re taking part in

What are the next steps? 

Here are some things we'll be working on in the next few months:

• Updating the filters on the website to make it easier for you to find opportunities you’re interested in 
• Making it easier for you to update your details when they change
• Improving how we monitor who’s getting involved in opportunities so we can make sure everyone has the opportunity to get involved

The EDI group has been very valuable to the team. They’ve helped us think about how we can improve the way we run Breast Cancer Voices more widely, as well as improving accessibility. 

So, the group will change to become an advisory group. This new group will run for the next year and will help us look at different ways we can improve Breast Cancer Voices to make sure that you have a good experience in our community. 

How do I get involved? 

We want to recruit some new members to the group. If you’re interested, or would like more information, please get in touch with us at voices@breastcancernow.org. 

We’d especially like to hear from 

• People living with secondary breast cancer 
• Carers or loved ones of people who have or have had breast cancer