Celebrating the launch of the Social Equity Centre in October 2023
The launch of the Social Equity Centre took place on October 19th at Toynbee Hall, a perfect venue as its mission is to fight injustice and poverty. We wish to fight this too and we want to do this through changing how policy making happens. We would like to thank everyone that joined us on the night.
The launch was a wonderful opportunity for the Co-Founders and Directors, Teo Benea and Adina Maglan to share our vision and how we will implement it.
It was very exciting to share our vision with 100 people, to have the support of the MP, Stephen Timms and organisations like Migrant Democracy Project and the3Million. We felt so much energy in the room for what we are doing and what we want to achieve. This came from the support that people had for our vision.
To build a more equal society where everyone feels heard and included
We shared how we will achieve this vision, through working in partnership with other organisations. We set out our priorities:
Representation: Increase the number of migrants and refugees that work in senior public sector roles, especially across different local authorities to ensure that the staff reflect the diverse communities they represent, and that policies reflect the needs of these minoritised groups.
Empowerment: Design and deliver training programmes to ensure marginalised voices are taken into account so that services meet their needs and increase administrative representation. To develop and support programmes that build community and political leadership in partnership with organisations working in the sector.
Inclusion: Provide strategic advice, research, and support to organisations and companies across all sectors to ensure that community consultations and engagement for different schemes (e.g. regeneration) are inclusive, representative, and localised.
Our services are:
Consultancy
Engagement with communities
Research
Having shared our vision, how we will deliver on it, we then introduced our team, we invited people who would share our vision and our values and help us make it happen and of course, had complementary skills and experience. We were delighted to be joined in this venture by Larisa Zilickaja, David Tross, and Teresa Norman.
We invited Marius Turda to be our keynote speaker and he told us about his work in anti-racism and eugenics. He shared that in the 1990s, he was told by academics that there was no racism in the UK. We hope now that nobody would claim this, we know so much now about systemic discrimination. He also discussed the impact of stigma. His speech clearly outlined the importance of the work we want to do, to make the voice of marginalised and minoritised groups heard and acted on.
And the day after the launch on October 20th, we had confirmation that we are on the right track. We were told we have secured the first grant from the National Lottery.
We will deliver on an 8-month project and the funding will enable more people from three Eastern European communities (Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Romanian) in two London Boroughs to reach their full potential through gaining insight and knowledge into public administration roles and a better understanding of the opportunities available in the sector. Below is more detail from the application:
‘a new project to help engage the Bulgarian communities in Enfield & the Romanian and Ukrainian communities in Newham (as these have had different experiences of migration) to find out about leadership opportunities in the local councils through workshops and by connecting them to people of similar backgrounds that are already working in different public sector roles. Learnings from this project will inform other projects aimed at other under-represented and disenfranchised communities such as people with lived experience of homelessness or other migrant groups.'
As we ended the launch, someone from the audience said: ‘the hard work now starts’. We know that we will need to work in partnership with different organisations, to win contracts and to deliver to high standards. We also know we will always be guided by our mission and values and that we can make a difference.
