Networking Event: Home Truths- The VCSE and Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities
Connected Voice VCSE Networking Event ‘Home Truths’ Wednesday 4th November 2020 1pm – 3pm
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- This event is all about bringing the local VCSE together, to share information and connect with each other.
- We present 6 of these events a year – all on topical themes
- Part of our celebration of Trustees Week
- Comes just as Black History Month is ending
Tahmina Ali – GemArts https://gemarts.org/
Performance of her poems – reflecting on her experiences as a South Shields born British Bangladeshi woman - ‘Face of places’ and later in the event ‘My beautiful’. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4rPnK6c-Qumj40lmKg2bmA
Nitin Shukla – Connected Voice Trustee and Vice-Chair – Event Host
- Sharing personal experiences of racism and its impact on him and his family
- Has a deep personal and professional desire to challenge inequalities
- Inequalities across a range of characteristics persist across our communities
- Reflecting on the findings of the ACEVO Home Truths report https://www.acevo.org.uk/reports/home-truths/
- Highlights under-representation of BAME people in our sector – at all levels
- Do our mainstream services truly meet the needs of minority communities?
- Important that we respond meaningfully and with transparency – and recognise racism
- Not about blaming – but moving toward meaningful action
- Recognise that there is an appetite for progress
- Change has to be driven by leadership – and within a framework for action
- Connected Voice is ready and willing to support other organisations to embrace diversity in their work – please do get in touch.
Salha Kaitesi – Teakisi-The Voices of African Women CIC https://teakisi.com/
- Newly established as a Community Interest Company with support of Connected Voice
- Empowering and promoting African women and girls
- An online platform for African women to share voices, equality and diversity
- Built an audience from 100 followers in 2011 to now more than 2 million
- Representations of African women don’t reflect the diversity, skills and potential.
- Personal experiences of casual racism and stereotyping
Colette Harrison – Sector Support Development Officer, Community Foundation https://www.communityfoundation.org.uk/people/colette-harrison/
- Leads on ‘Trustee and Skills Match’ programme
- Works on promoting diversity in the boardroom
- Emphasis is on first trusteeship – provide behind-the-scenes support
- Support organisations to create an inclusive welcome to new and diverse trustees
- Diversity enables much stronger decision-making
- Seeing a greater commitment to diversity across the VCSE sector, and a willingness to reach out and gain insight and advice
- Bringing diversity to a board can’t be a one-time thing, otherwise it is just tokenistic
Arooba Hameed and Hiba Yousuf – H.E.A.R. (Higher Education for Asylum Seekers and Refugees)
- Newly establishing as an organisation – working with Connected Voice in choosing the right structure
- Seeking to support and enable refugees and asylum seekers to access higher and further education – overcome barriers to study
- Peer support – bringing personal lived experience to support others
- Multiple challenges and experiences of building resilience and enabling mutual encouragement
- Personal experiences of seeking funding, scholarships, being rejected as over-qualified – recognising existing support tends to be in London
Dania Hammadi N.E.S.T. (North-East Solidarity and Teaching) https://www.facebook.com/N.E.S.T.NUSU/
- Part of Newcastle University Students Union
- Creates an opportunity for students to volunteer their time and skills to teach English language skills to the wider community of refugees and asylum seekers. Covers spoken and written language skills.
- Seeks to empower people to live a fulfilling life in the UK, boost confidence and enable them to integrate into local communities
- Reducing stigma and discrimination and bringing a wide range of students from different cultures and backgrounds together in a common goal to deliver NEST’s services
- Shifted services online to enable continued delivery of services during lockdown – expanded into offering COVID guidance, bedtime stories and circus skills for children, and ways to bring their learners together with peer support.
- Support for children resuming education
- Support for schools to enable them to offer appropriate support
- NEST has benefitted from Connected Voice support in training and funding guidance, and as part of the Haref Network
Lisa Goodwin – Chief Executive - Connected Voice
- Event has emphasised the work of smaller grass-roots organisations
- Future events will reflect work of larger more established BAME led organisations
- Shared the Equality value of Connected Voice https://www.connectedvoice.org.uk/about-us/our-values , and that embedding equality is one of our strategic aims for 2020/21
Vicki Harris and Wajid Hussain – Connected Voice Haref https://www.connectedvoice.org.uk/services/haref
- Haref works with Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities to identify the key issues around health in different communities, and improve the health information available to them. We help health services have a better understanding of what communities need.
- Connected Voice also offers Cultural Competency training – free in Newcastle due to the way it is funded by Newcastle Public Health, and available elsewhere as a paid-for service
- Reflected on the use of the term BAME (Black Asian and minority ethnic people and communities) and its limitations, and that our reference point for the use of the term is the Haref Network of organisations themselves.
Neil Shashoua, Lloyds Bank Foundation and Bonnie Chiu, TSI Consultancy
https://www.lloydsbankfoundation.org.uk/ https://www.tsiconsultancy.com/
- Bonnie Chiu has been working alongside Ngozi Lyn Cole https://www.gltpartners.co.uk/who-we-are to support LBF with implementing their commitment to racial equity, responding to the work of https://charitysowhite.org/
- LBF gives support with funding, strategic planning, and to influence decision-makers with the voices of smaller charities they fund
- LBF had recognized it had not been supporting BAME-led organisations to the proportion they exist in our communities
- LBF recognized that many BAME-led charities were not applying for funds as they had capacity issues or felt they would be less likely to be successful
- They brought in expertise to improve their overall approach to racial equity in all stages and aspects of their work, not just in grant-making decisions.
Breakout room themes:
- Needs to be an ongoing process of building on trust and confidence especially with organisations in positions of power, including organisations such as the police
- Needs to be a similar approach on disability – need to make links and connections for equity of involvement of people with disabilities
- Actively engaging, listening and seeking out participation and consultation with local communities – representation at all levels
- Joining up with other organisations who are reaching out so everyone is not doing it separately
- Reaching out by a wider range of means, not just one method, and not isolated events – ongoing relationships
- Need for training and support for staff, trustees, volunteers to
- Use of language – be aware of creating unanticipated barriers (e.g. ‘Citizens’ in CAB may imply not available to refugees and asylum seekers
- Creating a more diverse workforce – understanding the range of things going on in different communities, and potential barriers for applicants
- Having a passion at leadership-level for engagement and active steps to equity and engagement
- Giving time to debvelop trusting relationships
- Valuing input and giving meaningful sense of ownership of mainstream services and organisation
- Creating and maintaining ongoing partnerships across our sector and into the public sector
- Availability of materials in appropriate community languages – use of interpreting/translating services. Using technological aids
- Don’t keep doing more of the same – try something different
Event description
Connected Voice brings together the voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations serving North East England with the first of our Autumn 2020 Networking Events.
As part of our celebration of Trustees' Week 2020, and in the days following Black History Month, we're focusing on a number of key issues for Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and people here in the North-East of England.
In accordance with COVID-19 restrictions, we're delivering this event by Zoom.
The event will be hosted by Connected Voice Trustee and Vice-Chair Nitin Shukla
We're putting together our programme of brilliant speakers, who'll be talking about:
- Bringing greater diversity to your boardroom or management committee
- Their own experiences of racism and discrimination, both personally and professionally - including in our own sector
- The challenges their organisations, and the people they serve are facing, and the support they have received from Connected Voice.
- The innovative and world-class services they have provided over lockdown
- Reflections on how the local VCSE can adapt and better serve the changing populations of our region
- How funders are increasingly focusing on these issues in their practices and criteria
Confirmed speakers so far include:
- Arooba Hameed, founder of a small organisation HEAR - speaking of her own personal experience and her organisation's work supporting refugees and asylum seekers with employability skills.
- Colette Harrison - Development Officer, Sector Support - Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland on her work with Trustee and Skills Match and bringing greater diversity to your boardroom or management committee.
- Vanessa Nogueras - Business Manager, Urban Green. Speaking of her own personal experience as a Puerto Rican woman living and working in the North-East, and of Urban Green's work to increase diversity of its community engagement, with the support of Connected Voice, and their work to broaden and increase usage of Newcastle's open spaces by the City's diverse and changing population.
- Salha Kateisi - Founder and Executive Editor of Teakisi - The Voices of African Women and founder of Beauty of Rwanda speaking of her own personal experiences as a British-Rwandan woman, and the work of her organisations.
- Volunteer tutors from N.E.S.T. - Newcastle University Students Union's 'Go Volunteer' project supporting refugees and asylum seekers with developing English language skills, recently shortlisted as 'Charity of the year' in Third Sector Awards
- Bonnie Chiu: MD of The Social Investment Consultancy telling us about her work, alongside Ngozi Lyn Cole of GLT Partners, with Lloyds Bank Foundation to support them to embed racial equity in their organisation and in their grantmaking.
- Neil Shashoua: Lloyds Bank Foundation, Manager for the North-East and Cumbria, giving his view on the impact that has made on promoting and assessing their grant making, and telling us about its Racial Equity Funding as part of their COVID-19 Recovery Fund
- There will also be an overview of Connected Voice Haref, our health equality project for BAME people and communities in our region, and an introduction to some of its new staff
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and featuring a performance by North-East based spoken-word poet Tahmina Begum who many of you will remember from her appearance at last year's GemArts Masala Festival
We'll also be leading workshops with very practical outcomes for your own organisation
This event is likely to be very popular, so we advise you to book early.