Over the last year Diverse Cymru has continued to provide high quality services that make a difference to the lives of the people who we support.
Here are some of our highlights from this year:
Award winners
We were delighted to be awarded Race & Ethnicity Champion of the year in the WalesOnline Diversity & Inclusion Awards 2022 in July.
Sion Barry, Business Editor of Media Wales, declared Diverse Cymru “real changemakers on behalf of many throughout Wales.”
The award celebrates our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Cultural Competence Certification Scheme which seeks to increase culture competence by examining how unconscious bias can lead to unequal treatment.
Dr Charles Willie, Project Advisor and Assessor for the Scheme said winning the award will ensure “more health practitioners, public, private and third sector bodies are aware of (our scheme) and will join us to ensure Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people will be able to access and receive cultural competent person centred care.”
We were also awarded the Health and Wellbeing Award at the University of South Wales Innovation and Impact Awards 2022.
Pride Cymru
We had the privilege of meeting thousands of you at Pride Cymru and discussing what equality meant to the people of Wales.
You said, equality is…
“Feeling a sense of belonging in life and feeling supported throughout life no matter who you are.”
“No barriers to accessing fundamental human rights- public services, health care, education, jobs,
voting- being able to participate fully in society.”
“Everyone to be treated with respect and kindness. Recognising the aspects of identity that shape us
and make us a diverse society.”
Our away day
We welcomed many new faces to our team at our Away Day in October. We came together to discuss who we are, what we believe in and how we can help to build a more equal Wales.
According to our team, our current strengths include:
- Our diverse staff
- Our pan equalities, intersectional approach to identifying inequalities
- Our influence across Wales
- We platform the diverse voices of communities and smaller organisations
Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic Cultural Competence Certification Scheme Event
In October, we celebrated some of the amazing organisations who have completed our Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic Cultural Competence Certification Scheme including the CVUHB Memory Team, Platfform, New Horizons, Mind Cymru, Public Health Wales, and The Betsi Cadwaladr Mental Health and Learning Disability Services and the Learning Disability Therapeutic Support Service.
We heard from incredible speakers, including the First Minister, Mark Drakeford MS, who spoke about the importance of identifying unconscious bias and building culturally competent services and organisations.
We were also joined by Professor Emmanuel Ogbonna, Professor of Management and Organisation at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, and Co-Chair Lead for the Implementation of the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan who said,
“Cultural competence is the foundation of all human action.”
“The individual is unaware of their own unconscious bias. Unearth your own prejudices, and this is where we tackle racism. Diverse Cymru are helping change mindsets…, helping others make change.”
Jane Hutt, Minister for Social Justice, added that Diverse Cymru’s Cultural Competence Scheme is vital to help “meet the goals of (the) Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan by ensuring action, ownership, accountability and sustainability in the development of cultural competency in workplaces across Wales.”
Expanding our services
Over the last year, we saw an increased uptake of our services, partly due to the disproportionate socio-economic harm of the coronavirus experienced by marginalised communities in addition to the rising cost of living.
In response, we expanded our services.
Thanks to funding from the National Lottery Project, our Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub now offers mental health recovery based support to Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic people experiencing mental ill health in North and West Wales, in addition to Cardiff and the Vale.
We also partnered with Marie Curie Cymru to ensure more people in Wales get the support they need when someone dies.
We look forward to continue growing our services over the coming year to help build a more equal Wales.
Looking forwards
Over the next year, we will continue to help build a more equal Wales by expanding our services to support more people across Wales and by embedding the voices of diverse communities across everything we do.
Some new and exciting upcoming projects include further developing our HYPE (Helping Young People through Empowerment) Cymru project to support more children and young people with their mental health and wellbeing with funding from Natural Resources Wales and Children in Need, and reshaping our Advocacy service thanks to funding from Independent Age.
As a charity who exists to amplify voices, the views and lived experiences of our clients will inform our work at every level; we are re-establishing our lived experience groups to ensure the communities we work with can have their say on the issues that matter to them.
We will also continue to draw on the experiences of the communities we work with in the external training, influencing and consultancy we deliver. Our Cultural Competence Scheme will continue to grow as we work with workplaces to ensure they offer culturally competent services for Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic people and we will continue to influence policy.
This is an exciting time for Diverse Cymru as we begin to examine what equality means to the people of Wales and how we may be best help to build a more equal nation.