       |
|
Our History
The West Midlands
Race Equality Forum was established by the thirteen racial
equality councils and partnerships of the region under the
leadership of Waqar Azmi, the then Chief Executive of
Worcestershire Racial Equality Council. It aimed to plan a
strategic response for promoting race equality within the
West Midlands by maximizing the potential for joint working
to increase efficiency and effectiveness, setting out:
-
To
promote and protect the interests of constituent
members and communities.
-
To
identify and address local and regional needs and
priorities.
-
To
identify and promote best value.
-
To foster
collaboration, joint projects and joined-up working.
-
To
campaign to maintain and sustain local, regional and
national race equality services.
-
To
influence policy makers and institutions to deliver
race equality outputs.
-
To
develop core standards to ensure quality results.
-
To
provide professional support and advice to
colleagues.
-
To
undertake research and consultancy and disseminate
information.
The Forum sought
funding from the National Lottery Charities Board to set up
a West Midlands Race Equality Development Project whose
purpose was to increase the skills, confidence and capacity
of racial equality councils and other organisations with a
race equality remit, through strengthening existing
structures and services and developing innovative methods of
working to the long-term benefit of the most deprived and
disadvantaged black and ethnic minority communities.
The project was
intended to provide the following practical support:
-
advice
and training in relation to casework, racial
harassment violence, policy development, community
development, and public education.
-
partnership development and the sharing of good
practice.
-
awareness
raising of changing need, legislation and strategy.
Its work
programme was organised under seven headings:
-
building the
capacity of executive committee members (by providing
advice, training and other support).
-
empowering black
and ethnic minority communities (through community
involvement and development).
-
building the
capacity of volunteers (through recruitment, retention and
training).
-
building the
capacity of workers (in complainant aid, racial harassment
casework, policy development and management skills).
-
improving the
organisation and its services (be developing core quality
standards).
-
improving
organisational efficiency (through managing budgets and
human resources, and monitoring and evaluation).
In
the first year of operation, the project’s work
programme was adapted to meet more closely the particular
requirement of the organisations it was meant to serve,
following a thorough needs analysis. The original proposal
had not made a sufficient distinction between building the
capacity of organisations and providing services directly to
individuals - a function of local racial equality councils,
but not a function appropriate for the regional project. In
addition, work with non-funded RECs (of which there was only
one in the region) and volunteers (other than those serving
on committees or panels) was not pursued, after the
partnership agreement between Redditch (unfunded) and
Worcester (funded). Urgent development work on core
standards (recently introduced by the Commission for Racial
Equality as a condition of funding) was prioritised.
From
the second year of operation, project officers
pursued a more customised and differently-categorised work
programme, more in tune with the day-to-day issues faced by
the region’s race equality organisations. The new structure
was developed more fully for the project’s September 2000 -
August 2002 (two-year) strategic plan, under the following
headings:
With
racial equality councils and partnerships:
-
Funding
-
Training
-
Strategic
development
-
Service
improvement
-
Research
-
Communication
-
Collaboration
-
Monitoring.
With
national and regional bodies:
Three further areas of need have since been recognised:
What
was originally mounted as a project hosted and managed by
the Worcester Racial Equality Council has since been
developed into a fully autonomous organisation with the name
- Race Equality West Midlands - and constitution, set out in
a Memorandum and Articles of Association. Race Equality West
Midlands was registered at Companies House (company no.
4355394) as a company limited by guarantee on 17 January
2002. It was registered as a charity on 12 February 2004
(registration number 1102076). REWM also relocated to the
centre of the region: Aston Science Park in Birmingham in
2003, and to its current address at Holt Court in the same
vicinity in April 2005.
Under
the chair of Amir Kabal, REWM has established itself as a
nationally-recognised
professional racial equality service provider, increasingly
providing strategic leadership to the race equality movement
as a whole. Its Race Equality Digests are welcomed for the
guidance they provide on contemporary race relations issues
based on sound, practical, applied research findings.
REWM’s West Midlands Discrimination Advisory
Service initiative, an autonomous and independent
partnership with the University of Wolverhampton School of
Legal Studies, came into being in 2004, taking region-wide
complainant aid referrals in November 2004. It became fully
independent from REWM in governance and management in 2005
and is now represented in its own right on the West Midlands
Race Equality Forum.
|
|
