Liverpool City Council has volunteered to engage in a special project with Operation Black Vote to encourage more "people of colour" (the Director's phrase) from black and ethnic minority backgrounds to become councillors.
They are looking for ten councillors to agree to have someone from the black community to shadow them for 12 weeks.
I have put my name forward and we had our initial meeting on Monday.
The objective of the Councillor Shadowing Scheme is to ensure that Liverpool City Council increases its numbers of Black and other minority ethnic (BME) councillors and increases BME engagement with the Council in all areas and at all levels of local governance.
Recruitment of interested BME men and women begins next month, then there will be a twinning process to match them with the councillor volunteers and the scheme will be officially launched and commence in May.
Apparently there are more volunteer councillors than the scheme can support, so I hope I get picked to take part. I go to lots of African events in Kensington, our biggest BME group, and I know how passionate many of the people I meet there are about making a difference. I would love to be a conduit to making that happen.
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