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Medway Ethnic Minority Forum (MEMF), as the umbrella organisation of the minority ethnic community and voluntary sector in Medway, was chosen as the lead body to conduct the ChangeUp Additional Support Programme targeted at minority ethnic communities.
This project follows a needs analysis done by black and minority ethnic (BME) voluntary and community organisations to examine ways of integrating minority services into the mainstream Medway Local Infrastructure Development Plan, a ten-year plan for voluntary and community organisations in Medway.
A researcher from the BME community with multilingual skills has been employed to develop BME projects to be included within the Local Infrastructure Development Plan. Qualitative and some quantitative methods were used to ascertain the needs of voluntary and community groups. A semi-structured questionnaire was used for all groups to maintain reliability, consistency and transparency.
Overall 105 executive members of black and minority ethnic voluntary community organisations were consulted in the Medway ASP Changeup process, 73 of whom participated in interviews and focus group discussions lasting two to three hours, through:
- 10 individual presentations to governing committees of voluntary and community organisations;
- 30 meetings with individual voluntary community organisations, of which 13 were in-depth interviews;
- five MEMF board meetings and an away-day.
The following were identified as priority support needs:
- income generation – the need to make funding streams more accessible and raise awareness of these: additionally, assistance with funding applications was required;
- building facilities - the need for permanent premises, in a building that is appropriate and fit for purpose and that suits the particular need and has an appropriate capacity;
- training and governance – support for the management committees, the creation of appropriate organisational structures, the review of constitutions, membership and building on good practise;
- working capacity – a development and support worker to increase capacity and an outreach support worker to assist groups.
Additional support programme focus
The forum identified several new projects in addition to the two mainstream projects, namely a BME database and a communication strategy for the sector. Furthermore, there was evidence of the need for a referral network to be established with voluntary and community groups and service providers to deal with issues around housing, benefits, schooling etc.
These projects were identified as essential to strengthen the sector and as building blocks to improve the Medway Ethnic Minority Forum as a second-tier service provider, thereby improving representation and co-ordination of activities to benefit front-line minority organisations.
Future projects
The areas for future support and where a need was seen to be unmet within the minority ethnic sector are:
- youth development work – sport and cultural activities;
- a Medway carnival or mela – celebrating Medway’s diverse community;
- the needs of the elderly within the community;
- a multi-cultural community centre – supporting the citation in the Medway Community Plan 2004-2007.
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Recommendations To achieve the 10-year vision of ChangeUp and implement real changes, an immense amount of groundwork and immediate infrastructure support needs to be developed to engage the BME voluntary and community sector fully in Medway. For this to happen, MEMF needs to build its capacity to become a robust, cohesive and visible voice for the sector in Medway.
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