We recognise that as Britain becomes more of a multicultural and multiethic community there are tensions to be resolved often because of conflicting and contradictory needs of the different communities; we believe that it is critical to reexamine and redefine the basis of integration because the different communities all contribute to the economic and social advancement of this country.
Our belief is that the role of a management consultant is one of shedding light on issues but also one of adding value to the work of our clients and the communities that we serve. We continue to provide new approaches to resolving problems that are seen as intractable, that needs a setting amount of stepping aside to reframe the important questions that need to be asked.
We focus in three main areas of Community development, Enterprise Strategies and Employment initiatives as they relate to disadvantaged communities in Britain. Our work is influenced by the guiding principles of innovation, diversity and sensitivity that enables us to deliver enduring and sustainable solutions to the issues that confront the British people of African, Caribbean and Asian descent.
We are confident that our work assists in this important task of binding diverse communities into cohesive stronger communities that make a contribution to development and growth in this country and that eventually makes Britain a better place to live and work.
Community
Communities as places need to be regenerated from time to time when they fall into disrepair; however communities are not only about places, there is a human element of people who make up communities.
Communities also extend beyond places that makes communities of interest within the multicultural multiethnic fabric of our British society a legitimate focus for engagement and involvement. Communities of interests such members of the African, Caribbean and Asian communities that are relatively newly arrived in this country still need their community organisations to provide support to them in addition to what they get from the mainstream statutory agencies. Indeed the ability of these communities to integrate is best tested by the strength of their community organisations and whilst individuals may do well in these communities, it is when their community organisations are at their most vibrant that we see the community moving forward with progress.
African, Caribbean and Asian community organisations need a lot of management support to survive the transition from grant aided welfare organisation to sustainable organisation that provide services to their communities and other communities in collaboration or competition with other service providers.
Because they have a better knowledge of their communities they are not only the gateway to their communities but they are better able to provide culturally sensitive services that are heavily demanded even if these services are seen as supplementary services by the mainstream. Both grassroots and specialist second tier organisations need the management support to enable them run more efficiently and effectively. Equinox Consulting provides this management support offering a variety of services such as: facilitation of away day strategy sessions, board development, management and leadership training courses, feasibility studies, carrying out of appraisals, reviews and evaluations and the development of strategic business plans and capacity building and community consultations consultancies.
The purpose of our offering is to enable these organisations deliver better services to their users and the communities that they serve.
Enterprise
We actively support prospective and existing business people from the African and Caribbean communities because we believe that there is a lot of untapped potential and a lot more of unfulfilled aspirations for business development in these communities.
We believe that several in the community who need to be given the option to consider business enterprise as an option to employment or unemployment and that there are many who after being made aware of the management skills required to translate a business idea into action will opt for setting up businesses.
But we also accept that in the first years of setting up in business there is a certain hand holding and intimate advice that some of these businesses may need especially during these lonely initial period when the need to be focussed solely on their objectives of survival and growth.
Our support for small micro medium entrepreneurs from the Africa and Caribbean communities include running government sponsored business skills training programmes, helping them with the research and development of their business plans, providing advice when thy need an independent counsellor to take them through their business strategies and helping then to source funding from both traditional and unconventional sources.
We have advised local authorities and central government and agencies of assistance on what structures and support mechanisms, are needed to support black businesses and have helped in the setting up of grants and loan schemes targeted at these business people and we have worked with some of them to set up their own agencies of support such as business associations and chambers of commerce.
Research on enterprise is critical in informing strategy for the development of business by people from disadvantaged and excluded communities in the UK. The right strategies and structures will remove the barriers that make these businesses under-represented but this can only be achieved if we know enough about their problems, motivations and aspirations.
However since these groups are considered to be ‘hard to reach groups’ to research we deploy innovative and yet robust methodologies to ensure that the interviews are representative of the communities.
Employment
Most people go through the school system and are ready for employment in this country. Some African and Caribbean young people even stay on longer in the school system in the hope that they will get better qualification to enable them to start their career at a higher level. But finding a job in these hard economic times has proved very difficult for a large number of young people and for a disproportionate larger number of African and Caribbean people.
We believe that it is important to examine the barriers preventing these young people from getting jobs and to strategies the will remove these barriers. In some cases, it may mean working with employers to provide opportunity for these young people through a customised training programme to be guaranteed and interview, in other cases it may be about providing some soft skills training to get them motivated and confident in looking for a job.
For older employees who have been made redundant we have implemented employment action programmes that have enabled them to search for jobs successfully whilst keeping their skills warm by volunteering with small businesses and the voluntary sector. We also work with organisations to assist where large scale redundancies are being made to advice them on what measures to take and to advice their staff on their options and helping them into new job roles with other employers.
Our interest is in equality and diversity and this means that we work with private and public sector organisation to ensure that their workforce reflects that people in the area as well as the people that they serve and help them to implement equality of opportunity schemes at all level of their operations, from selection through employment, progression and retirement.
Innovation
Our brand of innovation is about trying new things and improving on existing things and is borne out of the belief that a process of continuously improvement is important to if disadvantaged groups are to advance.
As a consultancy we strive to devise new methodologies for carrying out our assignments and in seeking the views of traditionally disadvantaged communities we go the extra mile in trying to reach them. The process starts with ensuring that they are comfortable with our approaches and if it means holding training sessions for business people at weekends or interviewing them in the homes rather than in their places of business because that is more convenient for them, we are prepared to do that.
We also make use of the points of influence within their communities whether these are the known community leaders or the different faith leaders or the unsung pillars of the communities, we seek these out, explain the benefits of our work to enable them to assist us in our community involvement and engagement work.
Our innovation is also about doing things differently and not sticking all the time with slavish methods of analysis that sometimes miss the critical nuances of our quest, we extend these to make them more appropriate in the process consulting that is at the heart of our work to help transform communities.
Diversity
The world is full of infinite variety and diversity; that fact is what provides for progress and advancement. The diversity manifests in aesthetic and functional ways and shows that one size fits all mentality of policy makers may sound and look brilliant on paper but is really not the only way to make policy in a multicultural multiethnic country such as Britain.
There are other view points that are equally valid that help to impact positively on effective decision making. It is that diversity that we at Equinox Consulting believe must be celebrated at all times. So we consistently ask that the diversity of this country be recognised, that the people who through no fault of their own are traditionally uninvolved and excluded should be considered when decisions that affect them are being taken.
We assist through the work we do, whether in researching issues that affect minority groups, or in helping to engage with ‘hard to reach’ groups to ensure that the different dimensions and views of the different groups are elicited so that the impact of the decisions on them can be assessed.
Our belief in diversity means that we are prepared to work endlessly towards providing equality of opportunity for disadvantaged communities; we hope that with the removal of old structures that that sustained racial and other forms of discrimination we will work towards an attitude and culture change that will start accepting that it is time to start talking about opportunity of outcomes and devising mechanisms for the paradigm shift.
The diversity we crave is about respecting all, whatever gender or race or age or sexual orientation or religion or ability. We hope that we are able to spread the word about valuing all these people and working to remove their disadvantage to that in the principle of equity the duty to provide opportunity and allow all to benefit from all services in an equal manner will be the norm.
Sensitivty
We recognise that most of our clients are delivering useful services to their deprived and disadvantaged communities. They do this with very little resources or support from the statutory sector.
They believe that the statutory sector does not understand them and does not value the work they do and therefore is unwilling to provide them with the resources.
As honest brokers undertake consultations where we are able to translate their views to the statutory sector; we also help explain the implication of government policy to our clients. We endorse the approach taken by African and Caribbean organisations to introduce cultural sensitivity to the delivery of their services; these attributes contribute to the quality of the offering and make their service delivery more effective.
