Community champions essentially reflect their communities. They are varied by socio-demographic aspects namely, age, gender, ethnicity, education, and health status, however, they all are closely associated with their communities either in an officially recognized leadership role or as a member of their community who is driven to support others to take part in activities for the well-being of all. Communities can share a common space geographically or common identity.
Community Champions in the BAME Diaspora can contribute in various ways that range from reasonably passive participation, namely, sharing important information, to more active engagement. Active engagement of community champions in the BAME community can include discussion sessions to provide insight into the needs of the community. Together with this, it can also include strong collaboration which entails working in close association and having collective decision-making power in the planning scheme, design, execution, and analysis of services.
Community Champions, who are trained leaders in their community, can help in taking stringent action against stigma and discrimination in different ways. It is important to have more community champions among the BAME diaspora as they can play an important role in nurturing successful communities. They can actively participate in aligning the primary purpose of the particular community. Also, they are positioned appropriately to associate with members and the businesses to serve them in the best way. Therefore, they can act as the bridge between businesses and the community. These community champions are also highly influential, involved, and instrumental in making sure that community development programs for the community are well-defined and the objectives of the same are properly met.
A list of accountabilities of community champions is mentioned below to show how their involvement can help in the Upliftment and well-being of the community:
Community champions can motivate and inspire others to handle stigma, shame, humiliation, and discrimination in the BAME diaspora
Community champions can help in establishing links with subsisting groups/networks that might be interested in getting involved (might also include professional organizations)
They can help in detecting the local issues associated with health stigma, education, and many other forms of discrimination
They can also lead the BAME community and facilitate in designing ideas as well as innovative projects to challenge the stigma
They can plan and operate community events as part of the community
Champions can also convey significant information regarding campaigns to other members of the community
They can monitor, control and lead the discussion sessions on community
Digitally, they can follow the community, and promote pertinent hashtags to help community activities to surface to the targeted audience
Track and deliver input for maintaining content relevancy on digital platforms
Promote community activities, drives, as well as resources among their network for better visibility online
Champions can also initiate, uphold, roll out and assist in executing the community activities aligned with the needs of the community or identified issue
Track content metrics and suggest appropriate actions for improvement from time to time
Becoming a community champion
Individuals from the BAME community can learn how to lead and become community champions. Certain ways in which an individual can become a community champion and lead are by:
Observing others
Reading
Enrolling in leadership classes, training
Working under a mentor
Immerse oneself into practice
Cohesive Society uses a social enterprise model to promote cohesion and integration among marginalised communities.
To learn more about our projects, check here Cohesive Society Projects.
Look through our blog posts to know more about youth integration, the importance of higher education in the UK for BAME YOUTH
#communitychampion #BAME #BAMECommunityUK #Healthandwellbeing #volunteering #leadership #communitywork #cohesivesociety