Last Thursday both Charlotte (Policy officer) and I made our way down to Accrington for a WRC 'Why women?' presentation as part of Oxfam’s Routes to Solidarity project.
The project, headed by project officers Dr Archana Choksi and Sandhya Sharma, aims to support small BME grass roots women's agencies in the north of England to develop and strengthen their policy voice and encourage and enable lobbying activities.
We were invited to present to our sisters up north and engage on the topic of women in LSPs and to draw on our campaigns over recent years. Charlotte was fabulous, as always, with her comprehensive referencing to all the latest statistics and answering questions around how to influence LSPs.
For me, I relished this platform as a great opportunity to come out of London to meet and share resources with other women working in the women’s sector, who lo and behold have the same issues we do down in London (and with the classic, 'don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you' fear factor). Many of our sisters there hadn’t heard of us and so this was a good place to connect with them.
The day was definitely empowering, bouncing ideas around the room with potential solutions to various issues and also over the course of the day seeing them gaining valuable insight and support, in order to hold LSPs to account.
I hadn't expected to meet so many strong women all in one room, with so much potential to make change. It was an aspiring, gratifying and without doubt an eventful day.
The next session will be in Leeds for the York and Humber Region in July.
For more information, contact Archana on achoksi@oxfam.org.uk
Routes to Solidarity Newsletter Autumn 2009 Spring 2010
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