UK

Wales has a strong tradition of community identity and self-help. The Active Citizens programme in Cardiff aims to enhance these qualities by giving people the confidence to develop and deliver local solutions to community problems and share this experience at a grass-roots level with other countries. The programme in Cardiff is designed and delivered in close partnership with the local community organisations, Cardiff County Council, the Equality Champions Volunteers, Communities First and the Ethnic Minority Communities Initiative and the Welsh Assembly Government. This partnership forms the Active Citizens community and brings together young enthusiasts from all walks of life in the 17 most disadvantaged districts in Wales’s capital.

 

A young team of Active Citizens from Cardiff is committed to boosting their personal leadership potential and taking steps to improving their city, from developing the environment to creating learning and enterprise opportunities for other members of the community. The project promotes education and citizen activism and builds social cohesion in areas with a highly diverse population.

 

This ambition is currently being implemented through skills-training in cultural relations and community-building, project management and delivery, building coalitions, advocacy and lobbying. Cardiff’s Active Citizens have recently established active networks with fellow participants in Bradford, Sudan and Kenya, with youth and community workers in Sudan and Kenya.

 

Bradford is a city in West Yorkshire, UK, which has experienced significant levels of immigration since the 1950s, particularly from Pakistan. Its diverse community includes the second highest proportion of Muslims in England and Wales outside London. The Active Citizens programme in Bradford will be delivered in support of Bradford Metropolitan Council’s (MDC) Active Citizenship and Strong & Cohesive Communities agendas, involving a delivery consortium that draws on expertise from Bradford University (Department of Peace Studies) and the former Intercultural Communication and Leadership School. The relationship with Bradford MDC is part of a strategic co-operation emerging with the British Council that seeks to add an international dimension in supporting the MDC’s Big Plan, a ‘Sustainable Community Strategy’ produced by the Council and its partners to create a better quality of life for everyone in the city. It also includes Global Xchange and Connecting Classrooms, and supports the ‘b someone’ campaign.

 

Active Citizens will support the MDC’s Strong & Cohesive Communities chapter of the Big Plan in tackling inequality, improving social cohesion, and reducing political and community apathy. Overall, it aims to create opportunities for everyone to get involved and to contribute to the life of the district. Research and government policy recognises that active community members can contribute towards improving services and projects, increasing cohesion and inclusion, enhancing capacity and learning, and working towards a healthy democracy. In particular, the MDC sees Active Citizenship as supporting more cohesive communities not only through the promotion of meaningful interactions between people from different backgrounds but also by encouraging greater participation in culture and sport, as well as favouring intergenerational approaches in creating dialogue.

 

Thirty community leaders from Bradford will participate in the programme, seeking to break down barriers between diverse groups and promote stronger and more tolerant communities. Bradford’s local training has taken place, and participants have engaged in international exchanges with South Africa and Kenya in March 2010.

 

Bury, a town north of Manchester, UK, is taking part in both Active Citizens and Connecting Classrooms as part of the Connecting Mirpur-UK programme (a partnership with schools in the UK and Pakistan). Bury sits within the top third of deprived communities in England (ranked 122 out of 364 on the Multiple Deprivation Index) and while it is relatively affluent in comparison to neighbouring Manchester, it contains pockets of greater deprivation sitting alongside more wealthy neighbourhoods. Bury has a slightly higher ethnic minority population when compared with the national average; 3% of the population originates from Pakistan with a large number of that community from the Mirpur district.

 

The local authority in Bury is keen to integrate Connecting Classrooms and Active Citizens into its community strategy and will include both programmes in the new Community Cohesion Plan, which is overseen by the Local Strategic Partnership (Team Bury). The infrastructure organisation for the area – Bury Third Sector Development Agency – will lead on the implementation of Active Citizens, drawing on the expertise and resources of the Greater Manchester Youth Network and the Asian Development Association of Bury, as well as other voluntary and community organisations in the town. The aim will be to work with a representative group of young people reflecting the ethnic and social diversity of the area.

 

Three community representatives from Bury attended an Active Citizens facilitators’ workshop in Lahore, Pakistan in November 2009, which enabled them to work alongside their colleagues from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Mirpur District in Kashmir. The workshop was followed by a visit to the Mirpur District, which included visits to community organisations and meetings with the Pakistani Youth Parliament, one of the programme’s partners in Pakistan. “It was really valuable for the facilitators from Bury to visit Mirpur very early on in the project,” said Gillian Cowell, Social Development Manager at British Council, Manchester. “It gave them a fantastic insight into the context and community of Mirpur and has enabled them to motivate others involved in the programme with a real flavour and enthusiasm for working and learning together.”

 

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, famed for its vibrant arts and culture scenes. It has experienced much regeneration and economic growth in recent years, yet the East End of the city still faces some of the most severe socio-economic issues in the UK, characterised by high levels of unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage gangs and deprivation. In response to this, Active Citizens will engage 30 young people in Glasgow aged 18 to 30 years-old in an exciting opportunity to deliver a SAP that will make a positive impact to East End communities. Throughout the programme, participants will undergo training, personal development and interaction with a spectrum of international cultures. They also reflect the full diversity of their community in terms of race, educational background, religion, ethnicity and gender, and are already active in their community as volunteers, paid workers or students interested in making a positive impact on the lives of local people.

 

Delivery has been in partnership with Roars not Whispers, a programme between Oxfam Scotland and the Scottish Youth Parliament. This is supported through strategic engagement with Youth Link and Young Scot. In addition, an exchange programme has been established with Active Citizens in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the first of which took place in February 2010. Participants from Pakistan and Bangladesh met up with those from Glasgow at a lunch hosted by Royston Youth Action, a community project in the North East of Glasgow, where they were also able to chat with a local Member of Scottish Parliament, Frank McAveety. The rest of the week’s programme involved activities that enabled them to learn more about each other’s country and cultures. For example, they visited the Glasgow East Regeneration Agency (GERA) and the Scottish Parliament, as well as various social projects in the East End. They also visited the National Museum where a session was held on intercultural dialogue using a traditional Bangla scroll, which was adapted to tell the story of Tam O’Shanter (by celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns). Exchange participants are due to visit Bangladesh in March 2010.

 

The northwest of Northern Ireland contains a mixture of urban and rural areas, with Derry City and Letterkenny being the principal city and town in the locality. Derry (also known as Londonderry) was the scene of Bloody Sunday in 1972, an event that shaped the political landscape in that city for over 30 years. In recent years, the area has become increasingly multi-cultural following an influx of populations from Poland, Romania, Portugal and Africa. The abilities and needs of immigrant populations vary. For example, the Polish population mainly consists of migrant workers, but the Roma tend to face greater social isolation due to lower levels of education and fluency in English. Many of the immigrant communities encounter a variety of challenges involving access to housing, education, health, legal aid and detailed information available in their mother tongue.

 

Delivered in partnership with SEEDS (an independent organisation that promotes and realises the human rights, equality and full social integration of asylum seekers, refugees and migrant workers), Active Citizens aims to promote more peaceful, cohesive and prosperous communities in Northern Ireland. It will target a diverse range of individuals over 18 years of age with different interests, including health, education, sports, arts, drama, anti-racism, integration, media and environment. Active Citizens will help them develop skills to enable them to be more pro-active in their communities, as well as encouraging them to mentor and assist potential future participants.

Links are being developed between Active Citizens communities in Addis Ababa, Kano and Rift Valley with exchange visits in March and May.

The director of human rights organisation Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, gave an inspirational lecture in Derry/Londonderry in December 2009, in which she discussed the position of human rights campaigning in democracies, its dangers and opportunities in a fast-paced world, as well as the value of the Human Rights Act. Here is an excerpt from the lecture: “It’s difficult to seem positive, but I’m really here tonight to say in context of this discussion about public diplomacy or what we call ‘campaigning’, that I am so much more optimistic than I was even six or eight years ago [...] People are just slightly more decent than not. You can reach out to their common humanity rather than the things that divide them. There is an ocean of altruism and solidarity there to be touched. That’s my experience. Remember the public response in Britain, Northern Ireland, all over the world back in 2004 after the Indian Ocean tsunami? [...] Do you remember how people shamed their governments? [...] People shamed their governments with their personal donations into giving more. For people over there. For people who we don’t want over here because we want complete immigration control, right? Except not."

 

Read the full transcript click here.

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