Croydon BME Project

BNRRN recently conducted a survey with members to gauge their engagement with and participation in local civic fora in their respective boroughs. The feedback from a significant proportion of members was that:

• They are ignorant of the process of engagement in LSPs and other local fora and the direct or indirect benefits to them of engagement

• They find the process too cumbersome and complex so they attend meetings, but do not contribute to discussions

• They do not have the time to attend meetings and participate due to insufficient human resource capacity

• When they have tried to engage they have been faced with numerous barriers, including prejudicial attitudes by other members of the LSP.

This feedback resulted in BNRRN developing a partnership with Croydon BME Forum. With funding from the Commission of Racial Equality, the ‘It pays to be there’ project began in July 2006.

Background

The August 2005 ODPM national evaluation of Local Strategic Partnerships, highlights evidence that there is insufficient engagement and effective participation of ethnic minority communities in LSPs across the country.  The report also highlights that “the level of attention to equality issues by LSPs relates to the relative visibility of BME communities in the locality, to the history of race relations and to the patterns of service delivery… in some localities, community groups are at best uncertain, at worst suspicious of or antagonistic to what is seen as yet another initiative which may marginalise them”.

In London, with a 29% of the population from ethnic minority communities (which constitutes 45% of all BME communities in the UK), many of who live in the 20 NRF areas in London, participation on LSPs is again significantly disproportionate to the ethnic minority communities who live in these areas.  

A May 04 report evaluating the work of the Croydon Strategic Partnership acknowledged that whilst the CSP is recognised as a model of good practice, more work is needed to further engage certain sections of the ethnic minority communities (this is particularly true of the Neighbourhood Partnerships)

Objectives of the project are:

• Through PR, marketing and outreach methods, to raise awareness amongst BME community organisations in Croydon about the direct and indirect benefits of being engaged and effectively participating in the LSP process as well as the opportunity costs of not engaging.

• To support BME community organisations to overcome some of their human resource challenges and barriers through utilising skilled volunteers as researchers and support workers to enable them to engage in the LSP process

• After successful piloting and independent evaluation of the pilot, to expand the project to other boroughs in London with regeneration initiatives

A specific outcome for Croydon will be to link the Forums established structures to provide a sustainable mechanism for ongoing involvement and participation for those engaged.

Current work

The partnership is now recruiting 10 BME organisations in Croydon and at the same time recruiting 10 volunteers/mentors who will under go training on what local initiatives exist in Croydon, how and why they should get involved and the process/steps they need to take to get involved.

The project through training sessions and on-going support will build the capacity of these 10 organisations and enable them to be confident and equipped to be part of the decision making process within Croydon.

We will continue to update this page with developments on the project as it progresses.