Everyone has a role to play, but organisations and systems also have a responsibility to make action possible, safe and effective.
Sport has enormous potential to create connection and belonging, but racism and discrimination continue to affect people across Australian sport, from grassroots participation through to elite competition.
We believe addressing racism requires more than policies, awareness campaigns or simply asking people to “call it out”. Anti-racism is active. It means building the knowledge and confidence to respond when racism occurs, while also addressing the cultures, processes and systems that allow discrimination to occur or go unchallenged.
Our approach recognises that responsibility cannot sit with one individual.
Through our anti-racism work, Welcoming Clubs builds capability at multiple levels, supporting individuals to understand and respond to racism, helping clubs strengthen their practices and processes, and developing people across the sport sector who can lead this work within their own communities.
Developed through the Standing Together Against Racism in Sport (STARS) collaboration with the University of Melbourne, the Upstander Framework provides practical ways to respond to and prevent racism and discrimination.
The framework moves beyond the idea that being an Upstander means confronting someone in the moment. It recognises interconnected forms of action.
This creates different pathways for people to act while recognising the role that club rules, reporting processes, leadership and organisational systems play in creating safer sporting environments.
Our 90-minute Upstander Workshop brings the framework directly into community sporting environments.
Through discussion, reflection and real examples from community sport, participants build their understanding of discrimination, bias and racial literacy before practising how the four Upstander actions can be applied in situations they may encounter at their own club.
Importantly, the workshop doesn’t stop at individual behaviour. Clubs explore how their own rules, reporting mechanisms and existing structures — including member protection and child safety — can support the prevention of and response to discrimination.
Participants leave with practical strategies and greater confidence to take action, while clubs receive resources they can continue to use and share within their community.
90 mins | Face-to-face | Community sport | Practical & scenario-based
Creating lasting change requires this knowledge and capability to exist within sporting communities, not only with external facilitators.
Our Upstander Trainer Accreditation Program is building a network of trained facilitators who can deliver anti-racism and Upstander education within the communities and organisations they know best.
The program combines racial literacy, understanding racism in sport, the Upstander Framework and facilitation skills for courageous conversations. Trainers progress through learning, practice and provisional accreditation before being observed delivering or co-delivering an Upstander Workshop. Feedback, reflective practice and demonstrated delivery fidelity support progression to full accreditation.
This approach allows the work to grow while protecting the integrity of the Upstander Framework and the quality and safety of the learning experience.
Learn → Practise → Provisional → Observed Delivery → Accredited
Real change happens when these actions work together.
Our goal is not simply to create more people willing to speak up. It is to help build sporting environments where people know how to act, clubs are equipped to respond, and the systems surrounding them reinforce that action.
That is how being an Upstander moves from an individual response to a shared culture — and ultimately contributes to safer, more inclusive community sport.
Welcoming Australia exists to cultivate a culture of welcome and create a future where people of all backgrounds have equal opportunity to belong contribute and thrive
Welcoming Clubs is an initiative of Welcoming Australia, proudly supported by the Scanlon Foundation.
Our work is conducted on the stolen lands and waters of First Nations representing hundreds of clans and language groups. We acknowledge that our lives have benefitted from theft and dispossession and that we have a responsibility to support the efforts of Indigenous peoples as they work towards self-determination, sovereignty and land back. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.
Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
