Our vision and mission

We have a vision where all children can reach their potential in life.

Our mission is to develop the literacy, confidence and perseverance of children who are falling behind in class and have fewer opportunities in their personal lives, so they can achieve both at school and beyond.

In practice, what does that look and feel like?

Our approach to our work with children and each other is expressed in these values:

We believe in the exceptional potential of every child

We know that children have an incredible capacity to learn. We believe in the importance of giving feedback; allowing time for self-reflection; and enabling continual improvement.
The same goes for the people in the team; so being self-reflective and ambitious for the organisation, are expected behaviours.

We believe in the power of positivity and fun

We offer children a joyful environment where they can have fun while learning. We are relentlessly positive on their behalf, encouraging a sense of self-belief.
Together as a team, we create a fun and creative working environment in which each person’s talents can be nurtured. We look for solutions and work hard to include everyone so that we can all thrive.

We believe in hard work and putting in effort

We give children a safe space to make mistakes. We understand that making effort results in great things to be proud of and hard work can be more enjoyable and rewarding when tackled together. We motivate and encourage children to work hard and celebrate their achievements.
The same is true for the team, where we all work really hard, work collaboratively to get the best results and look out for one another.

Striving to be a diverse and inclusive workplace

The Literacy Pirates has always been committed to taking an inclusive approach to all the work that we do. We know that a diversity of experience and perspective enriches any organisation, enables the children we work with to better express themselves, and improves the impact we make. Our focus on equity, diversity and inclusion comes from our experience and context:

• We work in areas that are very diverse ethnically and culturally, and it’s vital that we are confident and competent in making our services accessible to all residents in these areas.
• There are occasionally-arising tensions around issues of race and class, and we want to make sure that we are understanding of and responsive to those tensions where we can be, and offer solutions where possible.
• We recognise that there are already significant inequalities in the education sector associated with various aspects of diversity e.g. lower attainment among children from low-income backgrounds, low proportions of teachers from ethnic backgrounds, higher exclusion rates among some groups of children. It’s essential that we are doing everything that we can to tackle these problems rather than accidentally perpetuate them e.g. in making sure that children see a diverse range of role models working in education.
• We are a small staff team, and we are aware that there are likely to be blind spots in our experience and perspective. We want to make ourselves aware of those blind spots by inviting feedback from a range of people who might have more experience and different perspectives.

In recent years we have taken a number of actions to strengthen our commitment to ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion in our charity. We have:

• Developed organisational policies to ensure that they do not discriminate against any employee, trustee, or volunteer, regardless of their background
• Reviewed our recruitment and selection processes to widen the pool of applicants we reach and reduce our biases e.g. through ‘blind shortlisting’, and monitored the outcomes of these to assess if we are attracting a diverse pool of candidates.
• We include children in the interview processes, in a children’s panel, so that the people we work with are represented in the process
• Learned more about the lives of the children we work with
• Enlisted the support of local people as guest speakers and facilitators within the learning programme
• Reviewed and updated our children’s library to include diverse authors and stories with diverse protagonists
• Employed recruitment strategies aimed at increasing diversity in our volunteer community.

Our priorities are now to:

• Recruit a trustee to be a critical friend and help us champion equity throughout the organisation
• Further increase the diversity of our volunteers
• Review our remuneration policy and approach, to ensure greater transparency, fairness, and equality
• Continually learn about each other and the lives of the children we work with.