Our commitment to tackling racism and inequality

Like most people we watched the injustice of George Floyd’s death with horror and disgust. We have followed closely the growing protests around the world in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. As a team we wanted to take time to discuss the issues raised and to think about our response before speaking out publicly.

It is a core belief of Breaking Barriers that Black Lives Matter and we will ensure that this explicitly informs the actions we take as an organisation to deliver our mission of supporting refugees into meaningful employment.

At Breaking Barriers we have worked tirelessly over the past five years to address the barriers that hold back our clients in their search for employment and integration. We also acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers, and that there is a lot more we can do to address the systemic racism facing black people in the UK specifically.

We want to take this opportunity to re-affirm that we are committed to tackling inequality and racism and that Black Lives Matter. We stand with our black clients, colleagues and volunteers, and black people worldwide, against racism.

We recognise that we have a responsibility to the Breaking Barriers community to constantly improve and work to better ourselves. In that spirit we are taking the time to start conversations across our stakeholder community, and our organisation and Board, so that we can understand the concrete steps that we need to take to actively address racism.

We will be reflecting on all of our policies and processes, our culture, and the ways we engage with the refugee sector and the wider world, to identify areas where we can do more. We may not get this right straight away but these will be ongoing conversations. We will be sharing more detail on our actions in the coming weeks.

We welcome further conversation with all our colleagues, friends and supporters on this issue and we will continue to educate ourselves and listen to the voices of those affected.

If you have any thoughts or feedback about how we can continue to improve please don’t hesitate to contact us: [email protected]

The Breaking Barriers Team