Volunteer Week 2020 Every year from June 1st to June 7th, Volunteer Week is an opportunity to celebrate all the remarkable organisations and individuals that dedicate themselves to supporting others in their community. This year, living in lockdown has presented many additional challenges for volunteers – one of the most immediate concerns has been making sure that vulnerable and isolated members of the community have access to food and essentials. We’d like to say a special thank you to everyone in North East who has been working hard to arrange food parcels and home deliveries for those in need: this includes local businesses like Siop Y Fro in Clawddnewydd, and the Community Café in Rhos, and organisations like NWAMI (Networking for World Awareness of Multicultural Integration) and CLPW ( Portuguese Community) who have been providing vulnerable minorities with food and PPE:

One of our key duties on the Regional Cohesion Team has been facilitating small grants funding to enable more of this much needed volunteer support. The Wrexham African Community organisation were recent beneficiaries of this programme:

There have also been lots of great volunteer initiatives to support our communities in other ways. In addition to food deliveries, the Rhos Community Café have also made their weekly meditation and mindfulness sessions available via Zoom; PISC (Polish Integration Support Centre) have been delivering training and educational support online for Polish families; and the Contact Club in have been running fun activity sessions for young people with disabilities, including a spot of karaoke for anyone brave enough to sing!

High Sheriff of Award On the theme of celebrating individuals who work hard to support the most vulnerable members of our community, we are also proud to recognise the

achievement of Godwin Akinyele, a volunteer caseworker for British Red Cross Refugee Services. Godwin was recently given the High Sheriff of Clwyd Award for his tireless efforts in support of refugee families in Wales: in addition to his role at British Red Cross, Godwin also acts as an advisor to the Welsh Refugee Council, a volunteer with BAWSO (national Welsh BAME organisation), and an ambassador for the Voices Network. How he finds the time, we honestly don’t know – well done, Godwin!

Sharing From Home Alongside Volunteer Week, another recent event on the community cohesion calendar was World Cultural Diversity Day on May 21st. Our North Regional Cohesion Team was proud to mark this occasion by unveiling Sharing From Home: an online community exhibition of pictures and photos celebrating the diverse cultural traditions in our homes.

This was a great opportunity to provide a positive focus on the diversity in our local communities, and to build closer relationships with a wide variety of minority groups. The response to Sharing From Home was fantastic: communities across Wrexham, Flintshire and Denbighshire sent in photos, drawings and paintings representing Welsh, Polish, Portuguese, Syrian and African culture (to name a few!), and thanks to all of these contributions we were able to showcase a thoroughly diverse exhibition, which you can see in full here. Among the many wonderful images we received, Godwin Akinyele also found time in his busy schedule to get involved. This handwritten, hand illustrated story helps us all to learn more about his Nigerian roots – it is a moving example of how Sharing From Home enabled people to celebrate their heritage in a personal and creative way:

Tension Monitoring

In addition to celebrating these positive examples of inclusive communities, responding effectively to community tensions continues to be a vital aspect of our role on the North East Wales Regional Cohesion Team. All communities have the potential for tensions to arise, which may lead to some form of conflict, and the nature of tensions will vary from one area to another. It is therefore important that local authorities and partners have up to date information about local trends in community cohesion. This will help to identify tension 'hotspots' in order to carry out early intervention, and prevent issues escalating.

We aim to collect information from local authority staff and partner organisations, which will feed into the Police tension monitoring process and help to develop a well informed response to community concerns at neighbourhood level.

Should you require any further advice or support, please contact [email protected].

For further support:

Call the Victim Support Line (Freephone 24/7): 0300 30 31 982

Call the Local Victim Care Team (Freephone 8am-8pm Mon-Fri, 9am- 5pm Sat): 0300 30 30 159.

You can send an online report to Victim Support here: www.reporthate.victimsupport.org.uk

Get In Touch Each month, this newsletter will highlight examples of our work, and the work of others. We hope this will offer a clear insight into our role on the Regional Cohesion Team, and provide a platform to link in with our partners. Please contact [email protected] for more information about anything you’ve read in this newsletter – or tell us about a project you’d like us to feature here!