Slough Race Equality Council

• support victims of racial discrimination and harassment through complainant aid and casework
• remove barriers to access to services by providing a local translation and interpreting service
• eradicate racial discrimination through partnerships with the public, private and voluntary sector through seminars, training and workshops, sharing information and best practice

SREC seeks to address inequality and empower disadvantaged minority ethnic communities and individuals. SREC’s services are provided for individuals in all communities and organisations in the Slough area.

SEE - Slough Engaging and Empowering - is a part of the SREC’s strategy to develop local communities and enable effective participation in public life. It is a programme focussing upon a number of major areas:

• Community Empowerment Training Programme: outreach and training in empowerment, personal and career development, race equality and diversity and active participation in public life; this includes mentoring, supporting trainees.
• Imagine Diversity Website and Community, Race and Diversity Library: online access to resources, information, advice and learning about equality and diversity issues; sharing best practice and connecting communities to services.

The Community Library helps community members research issues affecting them and their communities so that they can gain more knowledge and address inequalities more effectively.

• Action Research: investigation and strategic planning for improving local race relations and community cohesion.
• The project started in late 2003 and the first year saw the design of the training programme, a significant amount of data being collated and analysis started. To date, the project has achieved significant results, among which are:
• Over 70 Community Members trained, over 30% of which are receiving ongoing and extensive one-to-one support towards achieving their personal community related goals.
• Many of the 70+ trained community members have set up community groups, successfully applied for funding and undertaken further education and training. Several of them have engaged with community groups and individuals and have been contracted as paid community researchers / consultants.
• The creation of I>CAN – Inter-Community Activists Network has meant that community activists themselves are joining together in order to share experience, knowledge and skills and create a united voice for the purposes of addressing common issues (e.g. funding, support from statutory services, etc.).
• In-depth research has been carried out on issues related to a number of major topics, such as demography, policing / crime, housing and unemployment. The reasearch has used official figures (such as the 2001 Census and other public sources) extensively, but the end result has been improved by incorporating local variation, information from less obvious sources (e.g. Slough Translation and Interpreting Service), as well as anecdotal information that had not been quantified previously anywhere else.
• Outreach with newly arrived / hard to reach communities was undertaken to gain a better understanding of their needs and issues. This included Polish, Romanian, Somali and Chinese communities.
• SREC is now accepted and regarded as a valuable resource for accurate information concerning local communities. Recently, Slough Borough Council relied upon presentations made by SREC to support the case for the ONS (Office of National Statistics) to review Mid Year Estimates for Slough’s total population.
• www.ImagineDiversity.com, which is to be launched shortly, will provide research data gathered throughout the project. Currently in a test phase, the website will feature a number of sections, such as News, Resources, Training and Community, along with a search engine and an administration engine, which will allow updates to be added easily.
• The creation of a Community Resource Centre: a huge variety of printed materials has been categorised and made available to the public. Categories include Communities, Community Development, Education, Employment, Equality Areas, Health and Social Care, Housing, Welfare, Benefits, Legislation, Organisations, Police and Criminal Justice, Racial Harassment and Voluntary and Community Sector.

SREC has secured additional funding to set up and make available to the community a number of computers for use for community work and research purposes. The computers have seen extensive use during the past few months, helping local activists to forward their community work.