By Dr Sanjiv Lingayah
The Home Truths 2 programme on anti-racism in civil society has been active since 2023.
As we close the active phase of the work, we offer some reflections from partner organisations ACEVO and Voice4Change England. Before introducing those pieces, something about the Home Truths 2 programme itself.
Home Truths 2 exists to support civil society organisations and leaders to take serious, irreversible action for anti-racism. We did this through two major streams of work.
- The Race Equity Series: content on five themes, e.g., reporting racism, identified in our earlier research and engagement, to build understanding of critical aspects of how racism works and to strengthen practical anti-racist action.
- The Further Faster leadership cohort: A year-long anti racism learning and reflection programme guided by Pari Dhillon of the Social Justice Collective and Martha Awojobi of JMB Consulting.
The Home Truths 2 programme as a whole has directly and indirectly touched thousands of people in civil society. But to uproot racist harms, the work of the programme must persist and develop – as emphasised in the reflection pieces from Kunle Olulode, director of V4CE and Roberta Fusco, head of influencing at ACEVO.
Against a rapidly changing EDI backdrop, Kunle calls for precision and power over performative actions. He reminds us that the aim is justice, rather than zero-sum identity-based jockeying for position. In her piece, Roberta addresses the importance of sustained focus on anti-racism. She details steps ACEVO is now taking to anti-racism into its practices.
The two blogs articulate the work ahead to shift civil society away from being a site of racism to becoming central to anti-racism. At the same time, efforts to create life-affirming futures for us all is not just hard work, it can be seen as fulfilling what civil society, at its best, is all about.