Inherently, conversations on inclusivity can be difficult, and climbing is no exception. Most climbers approach the subject of inclusion purely from their own experiences and perspectives—and understandably so. It is difficult to understand how one can claim to be disproportionately and structurally excluded in a space you find open and welcoming. It is even harder to comprehend why they would desire to change the status quo when you have neither seen nor experienced any problems.
It is commonplace to see prevalent inclusion issues being swept under the carpet within the rock climbing community. Many climbers find it is easier to ignore conversations on inclusivity, engage in hollow conversations with no intentions of walking the inclusivity talk, stick to platitudes like “climbing is open and welcoming…” and “no one is stopping you…”, or hide behind the veil of protecting history and tradition. This leaves the burden of building inclusive communities to fall on the shoulders of those suffering from structural exclusion. Often, they are then criticized for advocating for inclusivity in the existing community systems.
Inclusivity brings with it new ideas and creativity that are critical for the growth and development of rock climbing. As the climbing industry continues to permeate the world, proactively building inclusive climbing communities is more important now than ever. The climbing community has to intentionally welcome differences and take deliberate steps to increase equitable access to opportunities and resources so that all people can fully contribute to the future of rock climbing.
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These lessons are developed as a result of the experience of founding and establishing Climbing Life Kenya.
Kenya has numerous rock climbing destinations and a climbing history spanning over a century. We also have a wide array of untapped potential for new climbing areas.
Kenya’s rock climbing community largely comprises of foreign residents (expats), locals of European and Indian descent, tourist-climbers and a minority of local African climbers. With the key decision makers falling within this demographic, rock climbing in Kenya is centered on the visitor experience and that of a privileged few without much thought for advancing inclusivity.
Rock climbing is unknown to most local Africans; largely due to lack of awareness, perception of the rock climbing as a foreign activity and the overarching socioeconomic barriers faced during entry and participation in rock climbing. A majority of the local Africans in the rock climbing community are mostly workers, either on the mountains or crags or at the few climbing facilities available.
Climbing Life Kenya targets to promote rock climbing to Kenyans of African descent who are less likely to be exposed to rock climbing. Our approach is designed to empower the community and add value to their climbing life. We endeavour to equip all who we interact with skills and techniques and provide opportunities to empower them to grow in the climbing community in line with their respective interests.
For example, we:
• helped connect one of our young climbers who was a student in film and photography with international opportunities for training in climbing photography to help him grow his interest in media as a tool for poetic outdoor storytelling;
• provide free of charge climbing opportunities to students who are keen to advance their climbing capabilities through our student volunteer program; and
• amplify local and regional voices through our newsletter, The Kenyan Climber.
In our journey, we have collaborated with individuals and communities in the climbing industry like The Climbing Initiative, Climbers of Color, Rocktots, Rémi Samyn, and Women Uprising Australia among others, all of whom have played an instrumental part in building our team’s technical and organizational capacity, as well as developing effective strategies, programs and activities which integrate international best practice.
Key Recommendation #1
Take personal accountability in helping to build an inclusive climbing community
Success in building inclusive climbing communities will result from the combined effort of each individual. Until individual climbers choose to move from their comfort zones and take personal accountability, inclusivity in rock climbing will remain no more than a buzzword to spice up conversations in socials, meetups, and social media posts.
Building an inclusive community starts with the decision to step up and deliberately see the landscape through the other person’s lens. It is about realizing that our experiences are not homogenous and acknowledging that another person’s negative experiences do not negate or invalidate ours. It is about making the burden of inclusivity a shared responsibility and helping realise the cultural shift needed to create inclusive spaces that safeguard the growth of rock climbing.
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To understand the practical solutions needed, Climbing Life Kenya gained insight into our rock climbing community by having conversations with leaders and active participants in the existing rock climbing organizations. We also took time to pore over books, bulletins, newsletters and other literature on Kenya’s rock climbing past. In 2020, we undertook an explorative study on “Factors Affecting Local Kenyans’ Participation in Rock Climbing” and gathered data from individual local rock climbers as well as community leaders through questionnaires with a focus on diversity and inclusion. The information we gathered has been instrumental in helping us develop our mission to directly benefit our local community in a real and practical way.
Key Recommendation #2
Understand the environment within which your climbing community exists
The first step to understanding your context is to acknowledge your personal biases, beliefs, and stereotypes. Reflect on your reason for pursuing the inclusivity agenda. Why do you want to increase inclusivity in your community? What is driving you? Is your “why” centred on the people you are championing to have included in the community?
This self-reflection makes us more conscious of the impact of our personal biases on the assumptions we make as we interact with others whose beliefs and stereotypes may differ from our own, helping us avoid such biases when important decisions are made.
The next step is to develop a deeper understanding of your community’s dynamics and an appreciation of how its past affects the present. Talk with other community members, read, and carry out research to get insights into your community with a focus on diversity and inclusion. Important questions to explore might include:
Who is part of your community?
Are members of diverse backgrounds joining your community?
Who are your community leaders?
Have they used their positions to make decisions which empower or inhibit specific groups in your community?
Are there circumstances, systems, structures, or conditions which exclude some groups of people from participating?
Thinking upfront about your climbing community’s context will help you set realistic goals and develop better inclusion strategies that address your community’s specific challenges.
Key Recommendation #3
Create an inclusive culture that is welcoming and respectful
An inclusive culture based on trust as well as transparent and respectful communication creates a space where people are able to be vulnerable and express themselves in an authentic way. With people having differing perspectives, value systems, backgrounds, and demographic identities, the most significant challenge is to build a community culture where everyone feels included. How do you ensure that your climbing community creates a sense of belonging with everyone feeling relevant and part of a shared vision?
The most straightforward and often overlooked fundamental to building an inclusive culture is words. Words have a profound effect on how we treat others within a community. They communicate our communities’ values and mold our actions and culture. Words can be used to deny access to rights, opportunities and resources to some members of the community whilst giving full access to the same to others. Words can be used to patronize, belittle and make fun of issues which are important to disenfranchised groups of people. Be intentional with how you communicate by consistently using language that is inclusive.
Transparency is another fundamental ingredient to building an inclusive climbing community. It helps build trust and a sense of inclusion and belonging. Tackle implicit and explicit bias and have rules apply equally to everyone - every time. Guaranteeing equal access to opportunities and resources through fairness and transparency, open communication and information sharing, makes for a solid foundation in the creation of an inclusive culture.
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Inclusivity is at the core of our culture at Climbing Life Kenya. Some of the ways we have weaved inclusivity into our space include:
• Designing programs that guarantee equal access to opportunities and resources to all community members regardless of their background.
• Building inclusivity within our organizational value system by integrating explicit diversity and inclusion statements in our policies and procedures.
• Ensuring everyone is treated equally and organizational rules apply equally to all.
• Creating social events which amplify and celebrate diverse cultures within our community. (e.g. our culture potluck where we get to enjoy climbing together as we sample foods from the climbers’ different cultures).
• Using inclusive language in all our communications to elevate the sense of belonging, togetherness and ubuntu.
• Developing a Swahili glossary of rock climbing terms to enable delivery of rock climbing sessions in Swahili.
• Meeting everyone at their level and finding creative ways to be accommodative of different challenges people may be facing (e.g. volunteer opportunities for students who are not able to afford rock climbing opportunities, organizing transport and hiring gear for those who do not have access, and hosting social events in locations which are easily accessible for all.
Key Recommendation #4
Reach out to the underrepresented people you are seeking to include
You cannot influence real inclusivity without an intimate knowledge of what the community members you are targeting need in order to thrive. Take deliberate steps to actively invite the underrepresented community you’re seeking to include in your community to participate in the community’s activities.
Cultivate an open mind and develop your ability to recognize when you are making assumptions and intentionally challenge those assumptions. Talk to existing members and reach out to those who are not necessarily a part of your community yet, and listen to their concerns. Sharing negative experiences is a personal and emotionally exhausting process to those who have been excluded, so listen genuinely and appreciatively.
Talk with them about ways to address these issues. Listen to their perspectives on how your community can work better with them. Be keen to look for the raw experiences and unspoken truths not being shared on social media.
The more you engage with the community’s stories, the better you will grasp their experiences and obstacles they’re facing.
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In Kenya’s rock climbing community, open conversations on diversity and inclusivity are few and far between. Locals who ignite conversations calling for more diversity and inclusion are treated with suspicion and mistrust with others being patronized or, at best, ignored. Diversions are introduced to avoid discussions that upset the status quo and uncomfortable conversations ignored or erased.
Climbing Life Kenya has frequent open conversations that offer startling candid portraits of the climbing community with local outdoor and rock-climbing enthusiasts. The raw personal experiences and frustrations shared are oftentimes in stark contrast to the picture painted on social media or in social gatherings. Climbing Life Kenya has also organized forums like the “Women in the Outdoors” and carried out studies that have allowed members of the community to raise their concerns candidly.
Key Recommendation #5
Create a strategic platform to address the issues
Take practical steps to address your climbing community’s issues in a real and sustainable way to ensure that your inclusivity efforts are not “all talk and no action.” Here are a few pointers to get you started:
1) Do the work
Break down the concept of inclusion and the diverse viewpoints gathered from your community into practical steps and actionable plans that have real and measurable impact within the community. Be deliberate in building programs that provide practical ways to engage groups who are typically underrepresented in your climbing community. These could include programs that enable ease of entry and continued participation, and mentorship programs.
Your work will most likely take on an advocacy role. Be ready to take on this hard work as it will crucial to the success of your climbing community’s inclusivity efforts.
2) Empower the underrepresented community
A truly inclusive community empowers all community members, makes leadership opportunities available to all and ensures that everyone’s opinions, perspectives, and experiences count when decisions and policies are being made. Give people practical tools to support inclusion and empower them to take on leadership roles within your climbing community.
Take a step further from equipping underrepresented people with just enough knowledge to serve the status quo by creating an environment where they can assume leadership positions that enable them to hold the existing systems accountable in a real way.
3) Address systemic issues
It is important to understand how the underrepresented groups in your climbing community have been systematically excluded and design your programs to eliminate structural barriers that hinder inclusion. Be strategic by focusing on the systems of exclusion rather than activities. Avoid performative “band aid” initiatives and activities.
4) Track progress and think long term
Building an inclusive community is an ongoing process of learning, unlearning and re-evaluating. It is a long-term process which will take time and present new challenges at every turn. Focus your climbing community’s efforts on long term results and set benchmarks to track progress.
5) Collaborate with others
Collaborating with other individuals and communities will help to build concerted effort for creation of an inclusive climbing community. This can take the form of informal or formal partnerships; long term and for one-off events.
If potential partners are not ready to accept the call for inclusivity, focus your energies on adding value to yourself and the underrepresented groups of people you are reaching. Focus on action and impact. New opportunities to cultivate relationships and collaborate with more aligned partners will present themselves as you continue to grow and elevate others.
Conclusion
Building an inclusive climbing community is much more than a progressive trend. It requires intentional planning, impactful strategies, hard work, patience, flexibility, and resolve. It goes beyond bringing in diverse individuals and sets the stage for all people to take part in the growth and development of rock climbing.
An inclusive climbing community cannot be achieved without a continuous commitment of its members. It necessitates assessing your climbing community’s history and dynamics from the perspective of others, creating an inclusive culture where underrepresented people can express their concerns, and adopting a long-term strategy for tackling the issues facing your community.
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Liz Ndindi is the founder of Climbing Life Kenya, a non-profit organisation based in Nairobi, Kenya whose mission is to invest in the growth of rock climbing for the next generation of climbers in Kenya. Climbing Life Kenya connects Kenyans with rock climbing by increasing visibility, building awareness and creating rock climbing opportunities with the local Kenyan in mind. An advocate for local-led solutions to local challenges, Liz has been sharing her love for rock climbing with others since 2015. Liz has a professional background in construction cost and contract management that spans over 15 years.