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SCoJeC’s Government Grant Increased Again!
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17 June 2016 |
We are delighted to announce that SCoJeC’s funding from the Scottish Government has again been increased for the new Financial Year 2016-17.
This is the eighth year SCoJeC has benefitted from the Scottish Government’s funding for equality and community cohesion, and the fourth year in a row that our funding has been increased. After a 28% increase in 2015–16, we have now received a further 20% increase, reflecting the Government’s recognition that we have more than delivered on our undertaking to contribute to the objectives of their previous Equality Funds.
The objectives of the Government’s new “Promoting Equality and Cohesion Fund”, which has replaced the previous fund, are “to reduce discrimination, lessen the experience of hate crime, improve participation and community cohesion, and address imbalances in representation in public life, including education, in order better to reflect our communities”, and our proposal, entitled “Empowering, Engaging, and Connecting Diverse Communities” clearly contributes to these aims. Our objectives are:
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Accurate, authoritative, and engaging educational materials about Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish Community are available for schools, teachers, and community groups; and accurate information is provided for, and accessed by, government, public authorities, other communities and the media.
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People with Jewish heritage feel better supported, networks are strengthened, people feel better able and more confident in reporting antisemitic hate crime, and the Jewish Community as a whole is more cohesive and resilient.
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Minority communities will be better informed about policy matters and better able to engage effectively with public bodies, including Government, in order to promote the rights and political empowerment of those communities to influence policy and service delivery, and to support the effective implementation of the public sector equality duty.
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The funding from the Government will therefore help us to continue to deliver all the main strands of the activities that we reported on to our recent AGM:
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Representing the Community to the Scottish Government, politicians, the public and voluntary sector, and other communities.
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Advancing Public Understanding by responding to general enquiries; providing formal and informal education; and maintaining our much commended website as a key source of information.
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Community Development – providing a support network for the smaller Jewish communities and potentially vulnerable Jewish people; publishing Four Corners; arranging events; working with Jewish Student Chaplaincy; and helping people to report antisemitic hate crime.
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Community Empowerment – keeping ethnic minority communities informed by publishing MEMO, a weekly digest of current information; alerting national and local communal organisations; and assisting Scottish communal organisations to comply with Child Protection and Immigration regulations.
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This increase in funding is recognition not only of the contribution that SCoJeC’s work makes to the Scottish Government’s objectives of improving community well-being and cohesion in general, but also shows their understanding of the needs that we identified through our original Being Jewish in Scotland project and the worrying negativity that our follow-up on What’s changed about Being Jewish in Scotland? (both funded by a different Scottish Government department) has revealed.
SCoJeC Director Ephraim Borowski said:
"We are delighted that the Scottish Government has once again recognised the value of our work both within and on behalf of the Jewish Community, and has so significantly increased its support, particularly in the current economic climate. This shows the trust that SCoJeC has earned by consistently delivering on our undertakings, and we welcome the Government’s response to the evidence that their previous support has enabled us to collect about people’s real experience of “Being Jewish in Scotland”, and their commitment to combatting hatred and discrimination and to making communities stronger, safer, and better integrated.
“However we cannot lose sight of the fact that our grant from the Scottish Government only covers around one third of the projected cost of our proposal, and we will need to raise the remainder within the Community if we are to be able to continue to represent and support Jewish people and Jewish life in Scotland effectively.”
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