It has been a long, hard and personal journey as a child of the Windrush Generation fighting for justice along with many others from survivors, politicians, diplomats, lawyers, activists, migrants and race equality charities.
With protest and debate spreading around the world following the killing of George Floyd, there is recognition that campaigning organisations must make racial justice part of their own practice. Taking our lead from #CharitySoWhite, we reflect on how the change-making community (and SMK) can do that.
Ensuring the voices of young people are heard is a daunting task, but not because young people do not have a voice of their own – they do. It’s because those who are best placed to create the changes that young people desire, sometimes opt not to hear them either, personally or systematically.
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any”. Alice Walker In our work at SMK, we see that one of the reasons why people don’t access their social power to make change in the world is because they think they don’t have any. We think people have more power than they might realise. But power is complex.
Me, personally, I love the Sheila McKechnie Foundation’s Social Change Grid. It resonates with me as it made the complexities of working within a huge sector easier to navigate.
I begin this blog by asking myself a question: how well have I shared power in my social change career? The answer to the question is probably good, bad and indifferent. I could have pushed at the structures that repress power sharing more forcefully. I should have taken more risks in empowering those with less
At SMK’s first ‘digital’ Change Network event ‘Children and Young People in Custody’ on 22 April we welcomed writer Jhanzab Khan from Leaders Unlocked, who gave a live recital of his poem Caged Revolution. It was moving and thought-provoking. Here he speaks about his background and experiences of prison.
One of the weirder moments of the last few weeks was when Madonna sat in a petal filled bathtub and told the internet that COVID-19 ‘doesn’t care how rich you are…it is the great equalizer.’
Civil society must throw away the idea that speaking up is ‘too political’ and step into public life – for the sake of us all
We don’t know how long the Covid-19 emergency will last. Charities, not-for-profits, community groups and mutual aid groups are now rightly focused on the immediate needs of the communities they serve, and on staying active so they can meet them.
