People from all ethnic backgrounds urged to take part

Engage Renfrewshire, the local TSI, is launching the area’s first ever integration network, to help organisations eradicate racism.

Called IN-Ren, the project will have its first meeting online on 26 July via Zoom and are local people from minority ethnic backgrounds are being encouraged to attend. 

Community and partnership manager, Karen McIntyre, said: “In Renfrewshire, we are committed to changing the long-accepted inequalities and racism that exist in our systems and service delivery.

“We need help though. These are sensitive, complex and crucial issues. We need to work together for change, to make life fairer for our minority ethnic communities.” 

Engage aims to develop IN-Ren as a forum for people from minority ethnic backgrounds, where they are recognised and acknowledged as experts of their own lived experiences, insights and opinions. Organisations and services will be invited to present, listen and learn about institutional racism. Racism may be present in the form of barriers, ignorance, complacency or other forms.

Agencies will then be responsible for making changes or improvements to address institutional racism, and feeding back to the group.  

In addition to the forum, Engage are also providing racial equality training with CEMVO (Council for Ethnic Minority Voluntary Organisations) as part of their core programme, and in September will launch an online Race Equality Toolkit for their members to better understand how and where they can create change to break down institutional racism .

Engage’s chief executive Alan McNiven, said: “We have committed to addressing the inequalities of our sector by learning and listening to the knowledge of our communities.

“Within IN-Ren we recognise equality experts as being local people from minority ethnic backgrounds.

“We’ll be asking our partners and members listen carefully in order to better understand the changes that need to take place, big or small, and report back to IN-Ren.

“We’re all learning about how we must do better on issues around racial equality.”