Take a step back and check your privilege

Everyone at a certain point in life will be (or at least feel) excluded from full participation in a social group or community. This is almost a given.

Think of the time you suspect you did not get the job because of your age or you were denied access to a social group because of the kind of car you drove or where you bought your groceries.

Exclusion can be based on a whole host of reasons, such as your weight, sex, disability, sexuality, marital status, religion, hair colour, skin colour, where you were born, your accent and the list goes on. Recently, Raven Symone from the TV show the "The View" stated she would not hire someone on the sole basis of their name.

Although exclusion in various degrees is inevitable, it does not mean that we have to accept it and do nothing to address it. As development practitioners, the first step is to have the concept of social inclusion at the core of our programming.

According to the World Bank, social inclusion is defined as "the process of improving the terms for individuals and groups to take part in society...Social inclusion aims to empower poor and marginalized people...to ensure that people have a voice in decisions which affect their lives and that they enjoy equal access to markets, services and political, social and physical spaces."

However, in order to understand social inclusion, we have to also understand privilege. Below is a video by BuzzFeed which depicts privilege in an impactful way. Every social programme based on a human based rights approach should not only have gender considerations in its programming, but also that of social inclusion.