Becoming anti-racist: SCVO's journey so far

In June last year, SCVO’s board of trustees and senior leadership team made a firm commitment for SCVO to become an anti-racist organisation.

The death of George Floyd in summer 2020 and the public response that followed made us stop and think. Staff at SCVO felt the same upset, anger and helplessness that so many others did, and we wanted to play an active part in making change happen.

There was a genuine desire and enthusiasm to learn, share and develop our awareness and understanding of issues relating to race; and we formed a working group that produced a report to kick-start our journey to combat racial inequality and work towards becoming an anti-racist organisation. In the last nine months we have honed our objectives and agreed how we want to approach this work.

We want to:

• be an anti-racist organisation that inspires other voluntary organisations to become anti-racist too
• embed anti-racism in everything we do, so all our policies, processes and activities are actively anti-racist
• explore intersectionality - the idea that social categories like race, class, and gender create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. In other words, we will think beyond race to support us in becoming truly anti-racist

To do this, we will:

• Take a learning approach
• Facilitate discussion AND take action
• Identify and action internal change that can happen NOW
• Identify and plan internal change that can happen in the FUTURE
• Be open about the challenges that come up in the process
• Share our story as we go, to inspire other voluntary organisations
• Work with others in the voluntary sector to understand and plan how SCVO can provide a platform to promote anti-racism across the whole sector

Our focus so far has been mainly internal, and some things have been more successful than others.

We’ve found people receptive and enthusiastic about the aim of becoming an anti-racist organisation. Reviewing our policies with an anti-racist lens and better understanding the diversity in our own staff team felt like an obvious place to start and that’s also where we have made the biggest strides so far.

Taking a reflective look at personal attitudes and behaviours to understand where those could be more anti-racist is another focus for us. A group of staff ran a campaign during Black History Month where they shared anti-racism information and resources to prompt reflections and discussion. There was limited engagement with this. Thinking about why that might be, we decided a more formal and informed approach to encouraging reflection would be a better starting place, so we are planning anti-racism and allyship learning workshops for all staff that will take place after the summer. The training provides a safe place and protected time for anti-racism learning, discussion and reflection. It will arm staff with the tools, techniques and confidence to challenge racism in and outside of work.

Our internal anti-racism group are planning an event as part of the Gathering 2022 which is taking place on 15 & 16 June at the SEC in Glasgow. More to follow on that shortly.

It’s early days but progress so far is positive and there is so much more we can do. This is just a snapshot of what we’ve done so far and we look forward to sharing more of our story with you as we go. Equally, if you would like to share your story with us about how your organisation is becoming anti-racist, we would be very interested to hear from you. You can get in touch with me at ann.rowe@scvo.scot