LEICESTER CITY COUNCIL'S EQUALITY & DIVERSITY CHARTER

Here's the text of Leicester City Council's Equality & Diversity Charter, launched at a meeting in the Town Hall today. The charter confirms (and elaborates on) the city Council's commitment to its Public Sector Equality Duty, which came into force in England, Scotland and Wales on 11 April 2011, replacing previous duties in relation to disability, gender and race equality duties. This triune duty comprises the tasks set in bold immediately below.

Leicester City Council is committed to equality of opportunity, elimination of discrimination, and promotion of good relations between all people.

We are proud of, and celebrate, our city's diversity.

We recognise that people have differing needs.

When allocating resources we will be clear on how we have prioritised individual and community needs.

We will treat people with respect.

We will provide accessible information on our services, community activities and events we support.

We will aim to deliver services that are accessible and culturally appropriate to those using them.

when making important decisions about local public services we will engage with local residents and communities.

We will work with our employees to ensure that equality is embedded in the workplace.

We have developed an equality and diversity strategy which reflects this commitment.

If you are a member of the public who uses our services, you can find out more about our commitment to equality and diversity at leicester.gov.uk/equalityanddiversity

If you are a council employee, you can find out more about putting equality and diversity at the centre of what you do at insite/equalities

The charter is signed by Sir Peter Soulsby (City Mayor) and Cllr Manjula Sood MBE (Assistant City Mayor: Community Involvement, Partnerships and Equalities - and Chair of Leicester Council of Faiths)

MEET IAIN STEWART, GENERAL SECRETARY, EDINBURGH INTERFAITH ASSOCIATION

A lunchtime meeting in Brucciani's, Church Gate, with Iain Stewart, General Secretary of Edinburgh Interfaith Association. Iain is taking the MA in Inter Religious Relations at St Philip's Centre for Study and Engagement in a Multi-Faith Society and is down here for one of the course sessions tomorrow.

Iain and I met for the first time almost exactly a year ago at an  second Open Meeting sponsored by Leicester Council of Faiths. The topic was "God in My Faith" and the meeting was held in in the Parish Hall of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, Mere Road, Highfields. At that time, Iain was in his previous post as Interfaith Worker for the Church of Scotland. On that occasion we had barely enough time to introduce ourselves one to the other and promise to make time to meet again later. So here we are!

We know many of the same people and places that feature strongly in the inter faith work in Scotland - although my experience there is mostly historical. It's good to hear about the current scene in my home country - and home town of Glasgow in particular.

At the end of our hour or so together, I take Iain into Highcross, to show him the site of our annual Inter Faith Week exhibition and the Faith Room nearby. I can tell he's impressed - I hoped he would be! 

PLANET LEICESTER: WEAVERS CLOSE PRIMARY

This morning I'm at Weavers Close Church of England Primary, Earl Shilton, taking part in the school's community cohesion programme. "Planet Leicester" is a week-long series of activities organised by the Leicestershire Education Business Company (LEBC).

I was invited at short notice (Monday lunchtime) to take part in Planet Leicester. I was supposed to be with these children on Tuesday morning at Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre, but I had to cry off as Grace was too poorly to go to school and I was obliged to stay home with her.

Jon from LEBC picks me up (along with a Chinese chap called Li) at Leicester University and drives the half hour or so to Earl Shilton. We're joined at the school by James, from Leicestershire County Council.

Mrs Herbert's Year 3 class is split into four groups of seven or eight. We have 25 minutes with each group in turn. To the children, Scotland seems just as distant and exotic as China! Each pupil has a workbook, with one page to complete for each person whom they see. Each of us answers the same set of questions and we have to do one distinctive thing with our groups, that they can show at a display on Friday morning.

• What's your name? George
• Which country do you come from? Scotland
• Which continent do you come from? Europe
• Why did you come to Leicester? Someone offered me a job here
• How did you get to Leicester? Train
• How do you say "hello" in your country? Hello
• What's your national dish? Irn Bru (yes, I know it's not a "dish", but I wasn't going to let anyone say deep fried Mars bar - or haggis for that matter. And the pupils know what it is - many of them have had it and like it!)
• What's your religion? Bahá'í (I have to make it clear that  Bahá'í is not the national religion of Scotland though!)

As for the distinctive part we do with each of our groups: Li is showing them how to write their names in Chinese characters. James is helping them make friends with a potato (he should be wrting his own blog!). I teach my groups some useful Scots phrases, such as:

"Keep the heid an ah'll buy ye a bunnet"

"Dinnae day yer dinger!"

"Many a mickle maks a muckle"

"Gie it laldy hen"

I give each group one of these phrases each. I write them on the board, one word at a time, getting the pupils to pronounce them together as we go along. I explain what each phrase means and ask them to think of circumstances in which they could use their phrase. I also coach them how to say their phrase in the style of an old man at a bus stop on a rainy Saturday night. I tell the children that when it comes to the display on Friday morning, they can say the phrase together as a group or they can choose one from amongst them to say it on behalf of the group.

When we all get together for 20 minutes at the end of the group sessions, Mrs Herbert asks me to say a bit more about being a Bahá'í, since the name is new to her and to her pupils. Nice to be given that opportunity.

Nice to be given the opportunity to take part in this event as a whole. I look forward to something similar comes my way again.

profile of the non-religious

To Secular Hall, Humberstone Gate this evening, for a talk sponsored and hosted by Leicester Secular Society: "Profile of the Non-Religious" by Prof David Voas (photo above). Prof. Voas is Simon Professor of Population Studies at the Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester.

His theme this evening is "Who are the 'non-religious' in Britain and where do they come from?" His presentation is based on statistics obtained from the 2001 Census and from the British Social Attitudes survey. Consequently, he takes into account how factors such as age, education, ethnicity, gender, marital status, political affiliation, social attitude affect or reflect whether (and to what extent) individuals, families and groups are or are not "religious". Several of these aspects of personal and social identity seem to have unexpected and intriguing implications on this topic. He also looks at geographical breakdown of religious and non-religious respondents to these questionnaires. Apparently, Aberdeen has the biggest percentage of its population who declare themselves to be "non-religious" (but the census question in Scotland was slightly different from the in England and Wales and allowed one to identify oneself as "non-religious" more easily).

The presentations contains some interesting definitions of what it means to be "religious" and "non-religious", which will be of interest here. We're asked to consider whether religious identity comprises on dimension or many and depends on the nature of the question being asked. A question such as "Would you say that you think of yourself as a religious person?" is different from a tick-box exercise. Definitions and typologies are justified by utility, although the real goal of this kind of investigation is to understand the world. It may not matter a jot in the end where we locate someone (or where they locate themselves) on such a scale. We learn about "strong" and "weak" forms of being religious and non-religious:

• attendance at services or prayers
• participation in religious rites of passage
• belief in God (with varying degrees of certitude or doubt)
• identifying with, or accepting affiliation, to a particular religion
• attitudes to religion range from hostility to indifference to support.

We also discuss distinctions between "secularity" (which is a descriptive term related to the absence of religious motivation or content) and "Secularism" (with a capital "S", being a particular ideology actively opposed to religious privilege).

From a personal point of view, I become more aware of  the difference between how the definitions of "religious" and "non-religious" are treated in England and in Scotland. For example, those who ticked "other religion" in the 2001 Census and wrote in "Jedi Knight" in England were put into the category of "no religion", while those who did the same in Scotland were classified as "another religion" alongside more recognised minority faith communities.

Dr Voas's conclusion this evening? That Britons are becoming secular without quite knowing it or knowing quite what it means.

Find out more about Prof. David Voas and his work:

http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/staff/voas.html

Find out more about Leicester Secular Society (the oldest secular society in the world - formed 1851):

http://www.leicestersecularsociety.org.uk/