Welcome to SVC’s first blog post tracking our progression in working towards our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) goals. We hope that this will help document our commitment to change within SVC.
Why do we want to change?
We recently released a statement in response to the Black Lives Matter protests. Werecognised that within the charity sector, institutional racism is a problem and that we want tolearn and to change in order to help combat this issue.
Charity So White, an organisation that’s committed to tackling racism within the charity sector, are asking charities to prioritise candid and honest conversations about racism, publicly acknowledge racism within the sector and within their organisations and commit to tackling institutional racism.
We want to be a part of the movement to tackle injustices within our sector and within our community. In their words, “Unless we take serious and urgent action to tackle racism, social justice will not and cannot prevail”.
How do we want to change?
In our statement we outlined several ways in which we want to implement change, including producing resources to support our beneficiaries, volunteers and staff; ensuring that our EDI developments are discussed in every board meeting and staff meeting; involving more demographically diverse groups into our work; and promoting initiatives, campaigns and policy changes to aid EDI. You can read more about the ways that we’re committing to change here: https://www.svcymru.org/article/response-to-the-black-lives-matter-movement.
As part of the goals we set ourselves, we also wanted to document our commitment to tackling racism and to the promotion of EDI, to make sure we’re being held accountable for the goals that we’ve set ourselves. In this way, we can make sure that we commit to what we’ve promised to do beyond the period of protesting and integrate this work into our day-to-day running of SVC.
How will we keep a record of what we’re doing?
We’re setting up this EDI blog which will provide regular updates of all the work we’re doing as a charity to promote EDI and combat not only racism but discrimination against any of the protected characteristics.
Protected characteristics include age, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, disability, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity. The Equality Act 2010 makes it illegal to discriminate against anybody because of these characteristics.
What are we doing to work towards our goals right now?
All of the staff at SVC are currently reading up and educating themselves about the protected characteristics and discrimination, and are putting together a statement about what SVC currently do and what we want to do in the future to protect everyone involved with our charity from discrimination.
Also, staff members and the board of trustees are working together to prepare online Discrimination Awareness Training, which was another of our goals set out in our response to Black Lives Matter. This will be shared on our website for anybody to access if they feel they would find this valuable, so that everyone has the resources and the information available to help with preventing discrimination.
What are your thoughts?
We hope that keeping this blog will highlight that we’re committed to change and will display that we’re putting our goals into action. However, if you think that we could be doing more as a charity to combat discrimination and promote EDI within our community, please share your ideas with us – we are always willing to learn and to improve.
If you have any thoughts or feedback, please email info@svcymru.org.
Want to know more?
If you would like to know more, here are some useful resources:
Black Lives Matter website: https://blacklivesmatter.com/
Places to donate to Black Lives Matter:
https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/?fbclid=IwAR3NDaBMzfGUNEwKlshva6ZI-b6dcWI62ApoEklOGlmwJShdTUHu9Hrf0M4#donate
Compilation of anti-racism resources:
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1BRlF2_zhNe86SGgHa6-VlBO-QgirITwCTugSfKie5Fs/mobilebasic
Petition for black and POC UK history to be taught as part of the curriculum in Wales:
https://petitions.senedd.wales/petitions/200034
Charity So White website: https://charitysowhite.org/
Information about protected characteristics:
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/equality-act-2010/what-equality-act
SVC’s Equal Opportunities Policy: https://www.svcymru.org/files/2020-04/1587657043_svc-equal-opportunities-policy-2020.pdf?f4d9f1a4c7
