SVC would like to take an opportunity to share our support for, and response to, the Black Lives Matter movement. We wanted to spend time learning, and reflecting on ourselves and our work, so that alongside our solidarity, we could come to you with what we are doing to change.
Firstly, we would like to acknowledge that institutional racism exists in the charity sector, and has an effect on the work that we, and all other charities do. Only by recognising this can we start to have honest conversations about racism and make useful contributions towards tackling it.
We are only at the start of this work, but we want to publicly commit to embedding anti-racist actions and conversations into our work moving forward. To begin with this means:
- We will develop a page on the SVC website documenting our specific commitments to anti-racism, alongside our other Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) work, so that we can be held accountable;
- We will work with agencies and experts to implement a digital Discrimination Training course – this will be a free resource accessible to all via our website;
- We will produce other resources to support our beneficiaries, volunteers, partners and staff to develop their knowledge - for example, a short-film for the adults we support with learning disabilities;
- We commit to setting up an EDI role on our Board of Trustees, which will help us continue to have honest and candid conversations that lead to action within our staff and Trustee teams;
- We will ensure our developments within EDI are discussed at every SVC Board meeting and staff meeting;
- We will reach out to more marginalised groups, with the aim to involve more demographically diverse groups into the work that SVC delivers;
- We will promote initiatives and campaigns, policy changes (at local, national and international level) to aid our EDI development within SVC;
- Our Trustees and staff commit to educating ourselves on institutional racism and how it affects our actions and our work;
- We will share resources on the Black Lives Matter movement, and additionally places to donate (if you are able to do so).
We also want to encourage the comment, critique or ideas of our SVC community as we develop. If you would like to get involved, or have ideas for how we could do better, then please contact us at Info@SVCymru.org
