Kick It Out launches Take A Stand initiative

Kick It Out launches Take A Stand initiative

New initiative launched to call for football community to tackle discrimination.

Kick It Out has launched a new campaign, called Take A Stand, encouraging people across the football community to take action in the battle against discrimination.

Kick It Out, football’s equality and inclusion organisation, has teamed up with a range of partners to launch the initiative, including Facebook and the FA. Most football fans will have witnessed some form of discrimination in football – on the terraces, in dressing rooms or on social media – but more needs to be done to move from awareness and into action.

Through the Take A Stand initiative, Kick It Out want to create a culture where individuals take personal responsibility for being part of the change. That includes fans, players, managers, CEOs, stewards, governing bodies, shop assistants and social media organisations – everyone on and off the pitch.

Take A Stand is both a challenge and an invitation for individuals and organisations to publicly commit to their own pledge. It is also a movement that everyone can play a part in.

Facebook is supporting Take A Stand by launching initiatives focussed on action, and centred on reporting and education. It is building a new automated Messenger service, for when fans are back in stadiums, enabling people to report matchday discrimination directly to Kick It Out. 

In addition, Facebook is also launching educational resources available to all fans through a WhatsApp messaging service. By adding 07432 140 310 to your WhatsApp contacts, and messaging ‘hi’, fans will be sent information on the current anti-discrimination initiatives in UK football, ways to report and changes you can make straight away.

Twitter has also committed to being part of Take A Stand, by continuing to support with campaigns and educational initiatives which combat online hate, as well as delivering training sessions with football clubs and police authorities. It will also continue to focus on proactively actioning hateful content, where now more than one in two Tweets are identified and removed without reports.

Sanjay Bhandari, Kick It Out Chair, says: “Our Take A Stand campaign aims to tackle discrimination, but also create a culture where everyone belongs and individuals take personal responsibility for being part of the change. We can all do something to take a stand against hate and promote a more inclusive society. Our ambition is to turn bystanders into activists and to crowdsource solutions by capturing pledges of individual action. We want to use those pledges that we receive from the public and organisations, to turn them into insight and make anti-discrimination strategies better informed by understanding more about what people are doing on the ground.

“We know that social media can be a battleground of hate, which is why we’re working closely with Facebook and Twitter to improve that through looking at better regulation and enforcement, as well as updated and new reporting methods.”

For those who would like to make a pledge or want more information on how to do this, please contact Kick It Out at info@kickitout.org. You can also make a pledge by joining the conversation on social media, just use #TakeAStand and tag Kick It Out in your posts. 

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