Opening Doors in Black History Month

The UK has celebrated Black History Month since 1987, but after the protests against racism that followed the murder of George Floyd — this Black History Month should feel different. This summer, household names from Yorkshire Tea, to Sainsburys, Sky and even Save the Children were queuing up to express their solidarity with black communities.

Welcome as the statements of support are — many of us are asking, what’s next? What’s different? And are we really willing to invest in changing the story?

This month the Advocacy Team is launching a programme that tries to do just that. Our Opening Training Programme will take a cohort of 17 incredible young — and not so young people — who all have the skills, experience, passion, energy, creativity and ideas to do incredible work in the development sector. Some have worked in development overseas but encountered a hostile European job market; a number run foundations and social enterprises, there are no shortages of degrees, masters and years of combined voluntary experience.

So far, all have struggled to break into development. We are determined to do all we can to change this because we know the development sector will be strengthened with their inclusion. We have planned an incredible program to support the trainees to further develop their skills, build their networks and to get tailored careers support. We are grateful to RESULTS UK and the British Red Cross for coming on this journey with us and to all the amazing development professionals who said ‘yes’ when we asked them to contribute to the programme in some way.

We need more help — so if you were thinking of going beyond some RTs this Black History Month, read on to learn how you can get involved:

1) share your expertise or career journey with our trainees to help us to deliver an even more amazing programme

2) CV and Cover letter

We would especially love to hear from you if you work in HR and you are willing to help us to review CVs, and run interview practice sessions and to provide tailored careers advice to our trainees.

3) Contribute and share

Finally, The Advocacy Team is covering more than 70% of the cost of the training programme. If you would like to share the load please contribute to our GoFundMe and share the details of the programme on social media platforms.

And our major thanks to everyone who has been part of this programme.