Charity Workers Share Shocking Incidents Of Racism: ‘It Shows Hypocrisy’

Samir Jeraj, 34, a policy and practice officer at the charity Race Equality, said he is often approached by other charity groups asking how they can be more diverse and improve what they do for Bame communities.

“You have all kinds of standard organisations with poor representation at board and senior level of Bame people,” he said, and when workplaces don’t reflect the make-up of the people they are seeking to serve, it creates distrust and makes it difficult to achieve success.

“These organisations need to look at actively recruiting people from Bame communities by placing adverts in the right places or by headhunting people,” he said.

Meanwhile, negative experiences can drive people of colour away from the charity sector. Keen said she reached a point where she knew no matter how hard she worked, there was no room for her to advance.

“The opportunities were going to people whose faces would fit,” she said. “Those faces were not people of colour. They were mainly white, male and of a certain age.”

In 2016, Keen set up her own brand and strategy consultancy and now works with charities as part of her role. “There is some good work going on within the charity sector regarding diversity, but more needs to be done,” she said. “There is a certain defensiveness or brushing things under the carpet when race is mentioned. Charities need to listen and learn from people’s lived experiences.”

Kaur said she was also frustrated by the lack of progress. “I despair that we are in 2019 and haven’t been able to get equality in many areas,” she said. “I thought I was contributing to change and trying my hardest to bring about change.”

“Who is monitoring the charity sector?” she said. “It needs to come under more scrutiny.”

Shafi said that this lack of accountability is the reason that she helped launch CharitySoWhite. “There is nobody that holds the charity sector to account with regards to issues of institutionalised racism,” she said.

“We wanted to highlight that these experiences are happening and will continue to happen unless the charity sector makes significant changes to the way it operates.”