Category Archives: Diversity

Sunny and Bhupinder Gill are first Asian brothers appointed for same EFL game

Sunny and Bhupinder Gill have become the first South Asian brothers to be appointed on the same officiating team for an English Football League game.

Bhupinder will be the assistant and Sunny the fourth official for the Championship match between Bristol City and Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

The pair, who are Sikh, are the sons of former EFL referee Jarnail Singh, who retired in 2010.

“It’s a proud moment for the family,” Bhupinder told BBC Sport. More

Simon Woolley: First black man appointed head of Oxbridge college

A political and equalities activist has become the first black man to be elected head of an Oxbridge college.

Lord Simon Woolley, founding director of campaign group Operation Black Vote, will be the next principal of Cambridge University’s Homerton College.

The former Equality and Human Rights Commissioner said it was a “must-have role”.

He grew up on a Leicester council estate and left school without any A-levels.

The cross-party peer, who was fostered and adopted as a child, later returned to education and gained a degree and a masters.

He is the third black person to be elected as head of a college at Oxford or Cambridge. More

Video games: How big is industry’s racial diversity problem?

When Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was released this year, it gained a lot of attention – not because it is the latest instalment for a popular franchise, it stood out for another reason.

The game was set in India, had two lead women, and one of them, Nadine Ross, is a black South African.

Other big releases this year include Assassins Creed Origins, which is set in Egypt with an African protagonist, while Star Wars Battlefront II used the likeness and voice of Janina Gavankar, an actress with part-Indian heritage.

But speaking to BBC Asian Network, Jo Twist, chief executive for Ukie, the trading body for the UK’s games industry, said there was still a long way to go before video games could be truly representative of the gaming audience.  More

Church of England appoints first black female bishop

The Church of England has appointed its first black female bishop.

The Rev Dr Rose Hudson-Wilkin, chaplain to the speaker of the House of Commons, has been named as the new Bishop of Dover.

Dr Hudson-Wilkin, who was born in Jamaica, said she aimed to ensure that “hope, love and justice remains at the heart of our changed lives together”.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said he was “absolutely delighted” by her appointment.

The Most Rev Justin Welby said she was “one of the most influential and effective ministers… through her long service as Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons”.

Dr Hudson-Wilkin, who is also a chaplain to the Queen, led prayers at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018. More

Chris Powell joins England coaching team as part of BAME programme

Former Charlton and Huddersfield boss Chris Powell has joined England manager Gareth Southgate’s coaching staff.

The move is part of a Football Association programme designed to “solve the challenge of under-representation” of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) coaches.

Michael Johnson, who guided Guyana to their first Gold Cup this summer, will team up with the England Under-21s.

There are only five BAME managers in English football’s top four divisions.

Former left-back Powell was capped five times by England during his playing career. He has also managed Southend United and had caretaker spells in charge of Leicester and Derby.

The FA has also announced that Jason Euell, Marcus Bignot, Omer Riza and Matthew Thorpe will work with other age-group sides.

UK Sport plans to double female coaches by Paris 2024 Olympics

A “long overdue” project has been launched by UK Sport to improve gender diversity across elite sport.

It aims to more than double the number of high-performance female coaches by the Paris Olympics in 2024.

As it stands, 10% of coaching positions across UK Sport-funded British Olympic and Paralympic programmes are held by women.

The government agency aims to increase that to 25% within four years as part of a new leadership programme.

Paula Dunn (Para-athletics) and Mel Marshall (swimming) will be among a group of leading coaches who will guide other women as part of the scheme. More

Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month – November 2020

20 November is Transgender Day of Remembrance and with that in mind we have chosen Annie Wallace as our Diversity Champion of the Month.

Annie is an actor from Aberdeen. A former National Youth Theatre member, she graduated from the Manchester Metropolitan School of Theatre in 2004 and has appeared in many theatre productions. As well as being a performer, Annie writes and records music and is a skilled sound recordist and designer.

Annie is a patron of Mermaids a charity supporting trans and gender diverse children, young people and their families.  Mermaids started small but has now evolved into one of the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ charities.

On 29 October 2015, Annie made history by becoming the first transgender person to play a regular transgender character in a British soap opera when she debuted as school headteacher, Sally St. Claire in Channel 4’s Hollyoaks.

Since starting in Hollyoaks, she has been regularly listed in the prestigious Rainbow List, Pride Power List, Diva Power List, and the USA OUT100, as one of the country’s most influential LGBT people.

She is a staunch supporter of transgender children, young people and their families. Her advocacy has seen her appear on Celebrity Mastermind, with Mermaids as her charity of choice.

To find out more about Annie see here

BIO

To find out more about Mermaids see here

To find out more about Transgender Day of Remembrance see here https://www.awarenessdays.com/awareness-days-calendar/transgender-day-of-rembrance-2020/

Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month – October 2020

October is Black History Month and also on 16 October it is World Food Day.  With that in mind we have chosen Marcus Rashford as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the month.

Marcus is a professional footballer who plays for Manchester United.  He was bought by his mum who often struggled to afford food to provide meals for Marcus and his siblings.

The issue of food poverty for families and children had always therefore been something that Marcus was very keen to help with and he has been working with the charity FareShareUK to raise money to supply meals for 3 million vulnerable people.  During the coronavirus lockdown the government insisted that food vouchers for families on free school meals would not be extended outside of term time so he decided to act.

He wrote an open letter to all MPs calling for the decision to be reversed.  The letter drew on his own experiences growing up relying of free school meals and food banks.  He asked that the government make the U turn to protect the lives of the most vulnerable which was not about politics but about humanity.  In June 2020 it was confirmed that he had been successful in his quest and the government changed their mind and extended the scheme through the school holidays.

He has now formed a taskforce with some of the UK’s biggest food brands to continue the work to reduced child food poverty and backed proposals from the National Food Strategy, for an independent review of UK food policy.  Marcus is confident that the group could help change lives for the better and is hoping that with a bigger team of experts he will be able to help more children.

To find out more about Marcus see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Rashford

To find out more about Black History Month see here https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/

To find out more about World Food Day see here http://www.national-awareness-days.com/world-food-day/

Noor Inayat Khan: Muslim war hero who became ‘unlikely spy’ for Britain in WWII honoured with blue plaque

A Muslim woman who became an “unlikely spy” for Britain when she was dropped into occupied France during the Second World War has been honoured with a blue plaque at the site of her family home in London.

Noor Inayat Khan, dubbed “Britain’s first Muslim war heroine in Europe”, served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the conflict.

Khan was born in 1914 in Moscow, but her family quickly moved to Bloomsbury in London’s West End at the outset of the First World War.

They then moved to France, where she looked after her mother and siblings following the death of her father.

However, in 1940, the family fled occupied France to Falmouth in Cornwall, where she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and trained as a radio operator, despite her Sufi pacifist beliefs.

She was recruited to the SOE – which was set up by Winston Churchill – in 1943, and was then sent back to France as an undercover radio operator.

In October that year, she was arrested by the Gestapo – the secret police of Nazi Germany – after she was betrayed by a French double agent, who was reportedly paid to hand her over.

Khan was questioned by Gestapo agents, who managed to imitate her over the radio so as not to arouse suspicion, but she escaped along with other members of the SOE.

She was recaptured nearby and taken to a German prison, where she was shackled and interrogated. She refused to cooperate, and managed to scratch carvings of her address on to her bowl so other prisoners could identify her.

After 10 months she was taken to the Dachau concentration camp, where she was executed with three other women.

The English Heritage tribute will mark the London family home which Khan left for Nazi-occupied France.

Shrabani Basu, Khan’s biographer, is unveiling the plaque on Taviton Street in Bloomsbury.

“When Noor Inayat Khan left this house on her last mission, she would never have dreamed that one day she would become a symbol of bravery. She was an unlikely spy,” she said.

“As a Sufi she believed in non-violence and religious harmony. Yet when her adopted country needed her, she unhesitatingly gave her life in the fight against fascism.

“It is fitting that Noor Inayat Khan is the first woman of Indian origin to be remembered with a blue plaque. As people walk by, Noor’s story will continue to inspire future generations.

“In today’s world, her vision of unity and freedom is more important than ever.”

The plaque will be unveiled at the address that Khan etched on to her bowl while in prison, with a virtual ceremony broadcast on English Heritage’s Facebook page at 7pm on Friday.

Khan’s plaque comes after English Heritage admitted the number of women represented by the scheme is “still unacceptably low”, with only 14% of London’s 950 plaques representing women.

The charity said that “if we are to continue to see a significant increase in the number of blue plaques for women, we need more female suggestions”.