Dear Jean - I should be grateful if you would forward this email to the IFF members on my behalf.  Many thanks.  Veronica

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Dear IFF member

 

As many people will be aware, we are now halfway through Black History Month (BHM), which provides an opportunity for black people to celebrate and recognise the achievements and contributions that they have made to mainstream society and a chance to raise awareness about these matters in mainstream society.  However, black disabled people have found it harder to identify with BHM in the past, since their contributions to mainstream society and to the black and disabled communities have not traditionally been recognised. 

 

You will, hopefully, recall that last year I produced an electronic BHM/Disability Resource, called “Holding Up a Mirror”, intended to serve as a mirror, reflecting the existence and contributions of BME disabled people to mainstream society and to black and disabled communities.  Their relative ‘invisibility’ is accompanied, perhaps understandably, by a corresponding ‘silence’ so that rarely, if ever, do we hear or read first hand accounts of the lives, hopes, fears or aspirations of BME disabled people.  Therefore, we have sought to amplify BME disabled people’s voices in a second Resource, a compilation of either first hand accounts by them and/or their family members about aspects of their lives, or articles or reports written about them and their lives.

 

As before, in the context of the BME disability project that KCIL has been running for several years with the borough's different and varied communities, the term BME is used in the document to include people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Chinese, Irish, Jewish, Korean, Mixed Heritage, Refugee or other ethnic minority backgrounds, all of whom experience this 'invisibility' and are correspondingly ‘silent’.

 

Please feel free to share this resource with as many people as you wish.

 

NB: I am unsure of the reliability of the hyperlinks on page 6 of the Resource (the Social and Medical Models of Disability PDFs), so have also attached them to this email separately.

 

Regards

 

Veronica Attah - BME Disability Officer
KCIL (Kingston Centre for Independent Living)
River Reach, 31-35 High Street, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey  KT1 1LF
Click here to see our location map
Direct: 020 8481 1442    Fax: 020 8546 7947    General: 020 8546 9603
Email: veronica.attah@kcil.org.uk    Web: http://www.kcil.org.uk
 

KCIL Ltd is a Company registered in England No 06240260

Charity Number: 262721

 

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