Community Cohesion following the death of George Floyd

Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 12:15 pm on 3 June 2020.

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Photo of Jane Hutt Jane Hutt Labour 12:15, 3 June 2020

Thank you very much, Mark Isherwood, and NWAMI, I know well of their work; we've discussed it. We talked about it in a forum recently, at a BAME meeting that was held, organised by the Ethnic Minorities and Youth Support Team and Race Council Cymru, who have organised many forums over the last few weeks. And the north Wales one, I particularly heard from NWAMI about their work in Bangor particularly relating to supporting the community—not just international students, but the community. And also, I've raised with Lesley Griffiths, the Minister, about the importance of recognising cultural needs in terms of our food box delivery, and this is very much reflected in the community cohesion that we've seen over the past few weeks.

So, NWAMI is an important force for good for progress and community cohesion in north Wales, alongside many of the other organisations that I've spoken to. In fact, over the last few weeks we've had virtual online forums; the Wales race forum has met twice; we've met with these regional groups, one in Newport that John Griffiths attended. But I think it's important that we recognise that we'd already put funding into hate crime projects: £480,000 from the EU transition fund, and those hate crime projects and, indeed, further funding of £350,000 for tackling racism in schools. We know that Show Racism the Red Card in schools has a huge impact on children's learning and understanding. And that work, already those organisations, third sector BAME organisations, and it always includes those at the grass-roots level because they have such an impact and they're doing the work, as you say, culturally, socially and meeting the needs of some of the most excluded parts of our community.