We are celebrating Black History Month (1-31 October), the annual celebration of the history, achievements and contributions of black people in the UK.
The month is a way to teach and remind us of the important contribution of black people in our history, that is often neglected. It’s an important time to boost recognition and challenge negative stereotypes, and to recognise and celebrate how black people helped shape our history.
Why are we celebrating Black History Month?
As part of our equality, diversity and inclusion commitments, we want to make sure our customers and colleagues feel valued and embrace each other’s differences.
By recognising important campaigns, such as Black History Month, this gives us a valuable opportunity to celebrate our diversity and have conversations to help us learn and make positive change together.
During these vital campaigns, we will be sharing the stories and experiences of colleagues with underrepresented protected characteristics to raise awareness, educate ourselves and help ensure diversity and inclusion is embedded in the way we think and the way we work.
At LiveWest we’re celebrating Black History Month by sharing stories and experiences of our black colleagues, celebrating what our black colleagues are proud of and recognising how black people have helped shape our history.
The theme of this year’s Black History Month is ‘Proud to be’, which gives black people an opportunity to share why they are proud to be themselves, and we look forward to celebrating that with our customers and colleagues.
Listening to our colleagues to help us change
We’ve launched a Race Equality Ethnicity Network (REEN), a colleague group to help us deliver our ambition to be a more inclusive organisation and deliver positive change. They help us bridge the gap of racial inequality for colleagues and customers, helping us embrace and understand racial equality and fairness.
The group supports in challenging our organisation, making conversations around racism normal, share stories and experience to help our colleagues learn, influence positive change and provide a voice.
The colleague lead of our REEN colleague group, Debbie-Ann Ellis, shares with us the importance of recognising Black History Month: “LiveWest recognising Black history month is important to me and the REEN group because we feel it will benefit the organisation by sharing history, experiences and stories about Black cultures. It allows our colleagues and customers to learn things they may never have been aware of and hopefully open people’s minds and give them a different perspective. We want to encourage discussions and asking questions to improve awareness as I feel the more people know and understand the less likely they are to discriminate or at least think twice before making decisions or doing things that may cause offence.”
We look forward to sharing more with you over Black History Month.