Who are we?
The Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations (CEMVO) is a national second tier organisation serving the minority ethnic voluntary sector and organisations that wish to work and engage with it. We were founded in 1999 and since our foundation have grown rapidly. We are now entering a period of regrouping and consolidation while still continuing to deliver to our beneficiary community.
CEMVO’s Vision
Our vision is to ‘Strengthen communities and tackle inequalities’.
We achieve this by strengthening minority ethnic individuals, communities and their organisations thus moving them form the margins to the mainstream of civil society. We believe that the best way of combating social exclusion is to develop social capital. We achieve this in four main ways:
- Through capacity building
- By developing community assets
- By encouraging members of BME communities to volunteer
- Through contributing to the development of policy and conducting research
What do we do?
The four points above cover a huge amount of achievement in the years since our foundation. This application is mainly concerned with the first point – capacity building. Before discussing our achievements in this area, a brief indication of our achievements in the other three is appropriate.
Developing community assets – CEMVO, in partnership with its sister organisation, the Ethnic Minority Foundation has acquired and developed two community assets, in Stratford and Manchester, since 1999. These provide BME community organisations with high quality low cost offices and office incubators, conference facilities and a base for CEMVO’s operations. We are in the process of acquiring our third asset in Gloucester and have started negotiations on another in Wales. In areas where CEMVO/EMF does not have premises, we rent them to provide a base for our staff and the groups that they work with.
Encouraging volunteering – We believe that this is a powerful way of making the voice of BME communities heard and improving service provision for these communities and society in general. Volunteering is improved by increased diversity. CEMVO has delivered a number of regional and national volunteering projects funded by the Home Office and the Department of Health. We have also signposted community members to volunteering elsewhere. Most recently, we are working on two projects, one to encourage older members of South Asian Communities to become trustees of organisations and a second, working with Attend and the Student Volunteering England to encourage volunteering among younger people.
Policy and research – We consider this to be the basis of what we do enabling us to assess the needs of communities and ensure that our offering meets these needs. Research also enables us to engage with government and other policy makers ensuring that the needs of BME people are considered and met. Particularly important research projects conducted recently have been around the area of choice and social exclusion in health. This work resulted, among other things, in the development of guidelines for the involvement of the voluntary sector in helping NHS patients use their choices in receiving healthcare. One of the bases for this work is our database of over 9,500 voluntary organisations nationwide, another is our connection with faith communities in the UK including hosting and supporting the Muslim Council of Britain and the Hindu Council of the UK.
Capacity building – arguably this is where CEMVO through five years of capacity building programmes has had the highest profile and greatest affect on the life of BME people in the UK. We have had four programmes which could be considered as capacity building of organisations and individuals. These were:
- The National Capacity Building Programme (this started as a regional pilot programme in London)
- The London Health Advocacy Network
- London Borough of Tower Hamlets Building Sustainable Communities Programme
- Patient and Public Involvement Forum Support Programme
The National Capacity Building Programme has engaged with approximately 1,000 BME organisations of various sizes and maturity. About six hundred of these are in London. The programme starts its engagement with a need analysis using our Diagnostic Tool Kit developed with our academic partner, the University of East London. UEL has also been important to the project in educating 40 of our capacity building officers (CBOs) to MBA level via a bespoke degree course which includes capacity building together with the usual management education.
Evidence of recent work
CEMVO has a good track record of engaging voluntary and community organisations and successfully implementing a range of interventions to increase organisational capacity. Our most recent work includes the following:
- Managed a five year national capacity building programme funded by ALG and working with over 500 organisations to improve their capacity.
- Worked with a total of 68 groups in 2004-05 across London and 121 groups in year 2005-06.
- Developed a user friendly capacity building diagnostic toolkit currently the basis of all our organisational development interventions.
- Hosted regular annual leadership functions as a way of improving governance, promoting best practice and networking.
Established of regional networks to give opportunity to all groups whose capacity building programme has concluded to continue accessing professional support, sharing best practice and consolidating their achievement.
We have contributed to growing body of knowledge and information through our publications such as “Understanding. Accepting and Valuing Each Other: A guide to legislation, good practice and religions, beliefs and practices for the voluntary sector”; The Black and Ethnic Minority Voluntary and Community Sector
www.cemvo.org.uk