EVC May Event: WAITS’s work on BME and Empowerment
Posted by Andrew Brightwell on 17th May 2010
Marcia Lewinson
Marcia Lewinson, the CEO of WAITS (which stands for Women Acting in Today’s Society) and Lynette Webb (of Lynette’s Get2gether) presented the work of WAITS’s BME and Empowerment Programme.
WAITS works to empower women, to aid their development and make sure they get the right opportunities. It also provides support to the victims of domestic abuse, counselling services and community services. The EVCP project it was delivering looked at helping black, asian and minority ethnic women to gain the skills they’d need to make positive changes in their communities.
Marcia described how the project sought to develop leadership skills in the communities it was working with. Part of this involved seeking out BME empowerment champions that it could then help to bring beneficial changes to their communities.
Confidence building.
The work would aim to improve the skills and knowledge of participants – helping them to develop greater confidence, better leadership skills and understanding of the decision-making processes that directly affect their communities. This work would also help WAITS to identify two case studies that it could use to demonstrate good practice in the future.
Waits sent out literature to attract people, then they had six sessions looking at leadership, power and influence, and decision making.
She said that a lot of the participants hadn’t spoken to neighbourhood managers or other people delivering services before, so there was real benefit in the work that they did.
Listen to our interview with Marcia: [podcast]http://rawm.podnosh.com/files/2010/05/Marcia.mp3[/podcast]
Lynette Webb
Lynette Webb, a beneficiary of the WAITS Every Voice Counts Partnership project
Marcia then introduced Lynette Webb, who was one of the empowerment champions the project identified. She then described what she has been able to achieve and her own experiences of the BME and Empowerment project.
Lynette wanted to improve the quality of older peoples’ lives through entertainment. She realised more could be done to help older people to be more active, through her work in mental health. After being made redundant she said that she decided to develop entertainment packages through craft workshops and role play. But she said that it was the work that she did with Waits that really helped her.
‘Something inside of me changed,’ Lynette said. She then had the confidence to go to the council to ask if she could take her ideas forward.
‘I thought I wasn’t educated. But If you educate somebody like me who left school at 13 it’s important. It’s empowered me to talk to people and make a change in my community, because I can assure you I have,’ she said.
Here’s Lynette explains her experiences:
[podcast]http://rawm.podnosh.com/files/2010/05/Lynette.mp3[/podcast]