We are happy to announce the launch of our new Resilient & Inclusive Communities Fund, funded by Foundation Scotland from the Response, Recovery and Resilience Fund, for diverse Ethnic Minority community groups and organisations to set up programmes and services supporting disadvantaged and excluded communities.
Grants of up to £3,000 are available to eligible local community groups and organisations supporting communities that are:
Experiencing, or are at risk of, domestic abuse
Living with poor, interrupted or impaired access to food, shelter and necessary amenities (e.g. sanitation, heating)
Experiencing poor of interrupted access to critical advice, services or care (owing to poor digital access, language barriers, physical or cognitive restrictions, changing circumstances, etc.)
Experiencing poor or worsening mental health (e.g. compulsion, dependencies, depression)
In poverty, or are at risk of poverty or destitution (especially those with no recourse to public funds)
The programme will run from September 2020–March 2021.
Full eligibility criteria, guidelines, and the application form are available on our website at bemis.org.uk/ricfund.
Re: plans for the return to schools and early learning and childcare settings
Following the announcement by the Scottish Government on Thursday 30th July outlining plans for the return to schools and early learning and childcare settings, Parent Club is very aware that the news will bring about a about mixture of feelings in parents and children alike.
As a result, Parent Club is leading a collaborative response by the Scottish Government, involving a number of key partners such as BEMIS, to help present a ‘united front’. Our aim is to reduce any stress, confusion and anxiety around these changes for parents, and ensure that all guidance is as clear as possible.
To help support Scotland’s ethnic minority communities, BEMIS will be hosting a special series of online Zoom consultations in partnership with Parent Club from 6th–11th August.
6th August, 11:00 am
7th August, 11:00 am
10th August, 11:00 am
11th August, 11:00 am
The purpose of the workshops is to provide community and group leaders an overview of the Parent Club campaign. Highlighting the resources, assets and information available for them to share directly with parents, helping them prepare for their children’s return to school and early learning settings in the coming weeks.
A Zoom meeting invitation will be sent to you in advance.
About Parent Club
Parent Club is the primary communication channel the Scottish Government uses to reach out directly to parents and carers, organising multiple health and education related campaigns under one umbrella for children aged 0–16. It aims to speak parents in a supportive, non-judgemental way, using peer-to-peer content and a community feel. From bedtime battles to teatime tantrums, parents can tap into the best tips from those who have done it all before.
www.ParentClub.scot features a dedicated coronavirus hub offering advice and support to parents as they face the many challenges of this pandemic.
Parent Club is the primary communication channel the Scottish Government uses to reach out directly to parents and carers, organising multiple health and education related campaigns under one umbrella for children aged 0–16. It aims to speak to parents in a supportive, non-judgemental way, using peer-to-peer content and a community feel. From bedtime battles to teatime tantrums, parents can tap into the best tips from those who have done it all before.
www.ParentClub.scot features a dedicated Coronavirus hub offering advice and support to parents as they face the many challenges of this pandemic.
It will be great if the above resource can be shared with your respective communities in support of mental health for New Mums.
We have had a very large number of applications to our Emergency Sustenance Grant fund, and while we are glad to be able to help out so many people, we unfortunately cannot continue to provide this fund at this time. We have had to make the hard decision to suspend further applications.
If there are any further developments we will post them here.
On behalf of the EMNRN, we today sent a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson regarding the consequences of having ‘no recourse to public funds’ faced by members of the diverse ethnic minority communities in Scotland.
Today we have launched our Covid-19 Transition Fund for organisations. With support from the Scottish Government we have £39,500 we are going to distribute to community organisations across Scotland.
The transition fund is here to help organisations respond to the changing needs of their members in a sustainable way. This can mean help in accessing food and sustenance, help in getting online and setting up online networks or creating local networks to engage with key services.
Grants are available of £500–£1500.
To be eligible you must:
Be a registered charity, independent organisation, or unincorporated association (we cannot accept applications from individuals)
Be from a diverse ethnic and cultural minority community in Scotland or deliver catered programs in conjunction with these individuals and communities
Provide a service or programme of work that will tackle online social isolation or support people to adapt to social distancing requirements and empower their access to key services, information, or support.
From Friday 17th April until Friday 29th May 2020 we will provide emergency grant relief to those facing acute financial vulnerability due to the ongoing situation.
Grant Fund total: £26,600
£16,600 – Scottish Government Resilience Fund
£10,000 – BEMIS Emergency Reserves
We can support people/families who meet the following self-defined criteria:
Have run out of or will run out of money between 9th April and 15th May
Not in receipt of funding from other similar programmes
Are unable to support their family due to delays in universal credit or self-employment support
Have household member(s) who are showing virus symptoms making it impossible for to go to shops or shop online
Are individuals and experiencing Covid-19 hardships with no family support, etc
Any other reason connected to the public health emergency that has material impact of placing the household in acute hardship
We will accept registrations or referrals from trusted partners, agencies and organisations. The referring organisation must be included within the application process. As such we cannot accept independent registrations from the general public without the conduit or referring organisation.
A referring organisation can be a local authority, community organisation or agency, health and social care organisation, local support and care networks or another public body.
We will pay grants of:
£60 per individual household adult to a maximum of £120.
£40 per child (under the age of 16) up to a maximum of £200 per family unit.
BEMIS Scotland are aware that ethnic minority communities across Scotland will need to self-isolate and may need additional support to access support agencies, emergency relief or make contact with broader community support initiatives.
Having spoken to communities across Scotland in the last number of days it has become apparent that the coming days and weeks will bring significant challenges for our communities.
As such we have decided to take the following measures:
we have set up a dedicated online registration hub that will enable us to identify where you are and in turn make efforts to ensure that local support organisations and community response initiatives are able to respond to you. You can register here.
We have set up contacts with our networks across Scotland to offer a peer to peer support service and sharing best practice from local community responses. We need to support each other during this challenge. To join this network please email us at communitysupport@bemis.org.uk
We are assessing to what extent our own reserve funds can be allocated to an Emergency Relief Small Grant fund that will be open to communities and individuals. We will announce details of this ASAP.
We will support the Ethnic Minority Resilience Network to access the Scottish Government’s Wellfare and Wellbeing fund being led by our Cabinet Secretary for Communities Aileen Campbell
We are in the process of establishing a support groups for mental health/counselling support with trained culturally skilled counsellors for supporting individuals and families with anxiety fearing isolation over the coming weeks and months.
This is a developing situation and as the weeks progress all of our efforts are being directed towards ensuring that our communities and individuals are linked into evolving efforts to support each other.
Our annual Multicultural Football Cup held at Toryglen on Sunday 1st December was once again a huge success. Thank you to everyone who took part and congratulations to the winning teams!
Migrant and Refugee Integration as a Two-Way Process: Opportunities and Challenges in Education
A major challenge for the increasingly multicultural Europe,
amidst the ongoing refugee crisis, is the smooth social integration of ethnic
and cultural minorities (ECM), including their children. Migrant integration
takes place at multiple levels, and one of the most sensitive fields is that of
school education. There are many interventions focusing on teacher competence,
the concept of intercultural education, and diversity management in the
classroom.
However, another important factor affecting the integration
process is parental engagement and attitude. Both parents from the host
societies and ECM parents have direct influence on the attitude, behaviour and
performance of their children, and consequently the integration process as a
whole. Positive parental engagement is of paramount importance for the social
inclusion of ECM children.
The overall objective of the Parents4all project is to raise
awareness, empower, and develop the intercultural competences among parents of
the host society and parents belonging to ethnic or cultural minorities (ECM)
in order to enable them to contribute effectively to the social inclusion of
ECM school-age children.
Improved competences and increased awareness on behalf of parents are expected to have a positive effect on the interaction of pupils of different origins, cooperation with school, and social integration in general.
Assessment Toolkit
The final Parents for All Self-Assessment Toolkit was launched on 7th November 2019 at the final project conference in Athens with multiple speakers from the Parents for All project and speakers from the Municipality of Athens Department for the Support and Social Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees by Marigo Chormoviti, Akrivi Panagiotopoulou, Olympic Training, Kristina Kudriasova from Lithuania, and Tanveer Parnez from BEMIS Scotland. A short film and discussion by Martin Kilgus from Germany. We also had Helen Georgakakou, from Hellenic Open University on creating two-way integration tool, and Intervention in Refugee Camps on Results and further needs from Tita Kaissari from Unicef.
This toolkit can help parents assess their need for the
training material, their progress after the training, as well as their
improvement in intercultural competences.
The toolkit for parents from host societies is available in
all partner languages, whereas the one for ECM parents only in English. The
toolkit is available in two formats (online interactive and pdf) in order to
enable its use in different learning settings.
Self-assessment toolkit of intercultural competences is now downloadable from http://parents4all.eu/
You can download the complete pdf edition; and work
collaboratively on an interactive edition of the toolkit: Online Interactive edition
