Bite Back’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB)

Bite Back’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB)

Bite Back’s DEIB vision statement is part of our commitment to making meaningful progress towards a movement where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered.

This vision has been co-developed by Bite Back’s young people, staff and trustees:

A fair food systems means our working culture and values, Real, Respectful, Resilient, Fresh and Energetic, reflects this vision. We support our staff, ambassadors and trustees to live Bite Back’s values in their work.

At Bite Back, DEIB means that our people are able to join and navigate the workplace, trusting they’ll be supported to thrive, and that we’ll respond with compassion and make change when things fall short. We recognise the systems of oppression which keep marginalised groups from power, and seek to proactively build equity. We are intentional about representation. We actively recruit under-represented voices, ensuring our staff team and youth board are representative of a wide variety of lived experiences.

We push to improve outcomes for those kept furthest from power, celebrate differences and ensure accessibility is built in, not added on.

A group of young adults walking along a gravel path outdoors, smiling and chatting. They wear black hoodies, lanyards with badges and casual pants or shorts. Greenery and a brick building appear in the background.


Our aspiration and intention is that Bite Back is an organisation that recognises, shares and acts on its power and responsibility to young people, employees, community and wider society, driving equity and inclusion in every space, and in every decision.

Our equal opportunities data

Working towards a more just food system means that our teams - from our Youth Board, to our Staff, to our Leadership, to our Trustees - should reflect diverse perspectives and life experiences. We believe diverse and rich representation strengthens our collective impact to improve child health.

We recognise that within our sector, organisations and their leadership are not always representative of the communities they serve. We want to be transparent about this, and to measure our progress over time through our equal opportunities data. As part of our accountability to DEIB at Bite Back, our HR team collects consistent and transparent data across ethnicity, gender, Free School Meals (FSM), and long-term disability, spanning our Youth Board, Staff, Leadership, and Trustees.

We have intentionally included recipients of FSM as a measure of socio-economic background - a factor that is deeply relevant to our mission, our community, and the lived experiences we represent externally.

Five Bite Back activists stand smiling in front of Parliament in London, they are holding a sign represeting Bite Back's banned billboard which reads Young Activists Bought This Ad Space So The Junk Food Giants Couldn't

We have benchmarked our own data against the wider charity sector, using Charity People and Oxford’s HR’s January 2026 findings as the most recent and sector specific dataset we identified

These graphs reflect data collected in May 2026.

Gender

Stacked bar chart of gender by group. Charity Sector: 72.3% female, 26.1% male, 1.4% non-binary. Bite Back Youth Board: 59.6% female, 36.9% male, 3.5% non-binary. Bite Back Staff Team: 76% female, 17.6% male, 7% prefer not to say. Bite Back Leadership: 43% female, 43% male, 14% non-binary. Board of Trustees: 50% female, 50% male.

Ethnicity

Horizontal stacked bar chart comparing ethnic composition by group. Values: Charity Sector 23.4% minority / 76.6% white; Bite Back Youth Board 60.3% / 39.7%; Bite Back Staff Team 23.6% / 76.4%; Bite Back Leadership 28.6% / 71.4%; Bite Back Board of Trustees 50% / 50%. Purple = people from ethnic minority; teal = people from white background.

LONG TERM HEALTH

Horizontal stacked-bar chart comparing people with (purple) and without (teal) long-term health illness across five groups: Charity Sector 8.5% with / 91.5% without; Bite Back Youth Board 7% / 93%; Bite Back Staff Team 17.6% / 82.4%; Bite Back Leadership 14% / 86%; Bite Back Board of Trustees 0% / 100%.

Received FREE SCHOOL MEALS

Bar chart comparing percent who received FSM (purple) vs did not (teal) by group: Charity Sector 39.7% received / 60.3% did not; Bite Back Youth Board 13.8% / 86.2%; Bite Back Staff Team 29.4% / 70.6%; Bite Back Leadership 28.6% / 71.4%; Bite Back Board of Trustees 28% / 72%.

What we’re doing next

We will continue to review and improve our DEIB work through regular data collection and reflection. Our next survey will take place in April 2027, and we are committed to keeping this page updated with our latest findings and actions.

By sharing this data openly, we aim to be transparent about our progress, honest about where we need to improve, and accountable to the young people, communities, and colleagues we serve.

Learn more about the movement

Since 2019 we've been biting back - and this is just the beginning. Take a look at some of the moments that have defined our journey so far.

Our Journey