Charity campaigners will release new anti-racism guidance next month amid concerns that conversations about race and discrimination have become “stifled” in recent months.
Lena Bheeroo, engagement and equity manager at the global development umbrella charity Bond, told Third Sector she hoped the framework would bring “motivation and momentum” to anti-racism work at aid charities at a time when the sector risked “dragging our feet” over the issue.
The document, to be published next month, will include “starter questions” to give charities a “light-touch and specific” guide to exploring anti-racism, said Bheeroo.
She said the framework was “slightly challenging, but we all need to be stretched out of our comfort zones to make progress on this”.
Anti-racism work at global development charities and elsewhere in the sector is “a bit stifled at the moment”, she said.
Bheeroo said the framework was created after conversations with other people of colour in the charity sector as well as with Bond’s members, who wanted “to create a bit of a plan to help people understand that the issue of anti-racism is not to be siloed in a box or [left with] human resources, or sit just with the chief executive”.
Anti-racism was an “everyone problem”, she said. “We must all shoulder this burden and then we can all progress.
“We want to get to a more equitable sector. We want to get to an international development system that is more equitable, that works for everyone.”
Several charities have faced issues of racism over the past 12 months, including ActionAid UK, Amnesty International UK and the grant-maker Wellcome.
Bheeroo said that, at a time when charities faced so many financial pressures, anti-racism must remain “on the priority list, at the top of that list”.
She called for greater “courage and bravery” across the sector, arguing: “The longer that we drag our feet as a sector in addressing this, the longer black people and people of colour get harmed and continue to do so.”
The framework will be available to download from 13 September.