Join Us, and Rise Together

Last year, I attended an event on a report on the inequities faced by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic — BME — women who are victims of violence. While violence against women is a crime that is blind to whose life it affects — rich and poor, young and old — we know that many BME women across the UK face additional hurdles seeking help and protection.

What struck me about this particular event was not the hard-hitting stats (though there are many); it was the incredible stories told by Zlakha Ahmed about the targeted, sensitive and inclusive support that her organisation, Apna Haq, was able to give women in Rotherham. She is a bold, dedicated BME woman herself, and leads her organisation with fire, drive and passion.

For some time, the team at I.G. have been thinking about how we best help spur change in a sector that can sometimes be hesitant to try new ways of collaborating, generating income, or telling their stories. We also know that not every small charity can afford external advisors, but that sometimes they are the ones that could benefit the most from our help.

With all this in mind, we decided to join forces with two great friends and thought partners, GMSP Foundation, led by the inimitable Sonal Sachdev Patel, and our sister company Social Misfits Media, to do something about that. For us there were a few questions: how can we drive more awareness and funding to the needs of powerful specialist service organisations, like Apna Haq, who are critical, front-line actors in the fight to end violence against women? How can inspire and incentivise charities in a sector not always know for collaboration to work together? And how can make our approach, which is all about building long-term, sustainable funding streams, relevant for smaller organisations?

Rise Together is our attempt to answer those questions, and highlight amazing practice and work at the same time. Today we launch this campaign to raise awareness and funds for five incredible organisations that tackle violence against BME women across the UK. The five — Apna Haq, Ashiana, IMECE, LAWA, and LAWRS — are led by visionary, hard-working women doing amazing things. We’ve spent the last six months with them, training them on fundraising, digital comms, and storytelling, learning from them, and designing this campaign which will run over the 16 days of activism to end violence against women.

To me, this issue is personal. I’m the daughter of a Cuban immigrant to the US, and an immigrant to, and now citizen of, the UK. The inequality and challenges of the communities supported by our five organisations are deeply resonant — and make me even more driven to channel awareness and funds to strong actors working in this field.

There are three ways you can join us to support this campaign:

1. Learn more about the issue by watching our video.
2. Share information about the campaign with your networks.
3. Give, in any amount, to our crowdfunding effort. 100% of your donation (plus gift aid if you are a UK taxpayer!), will go directly to the five organisations we are supporting. We want to raise £150,000 of unrestricted funding to help them empower and support more women, and set them up for organisational success in 2019 and beyond.

In one session together, we discussed the words that best described the work we were doing together. The number one choice? Solidarity. Regardless of our background, we are in this together and we hope you’ll join us to support Rise Together, and powerful work by organisations with impact.