Community cohesion has recently become high on the Government's priority agenda list. We live in a society where the arbitrary barriers of race, faith, gender, class, disability, age, and sexual orientation can affect the opportunities, income, civil rights, and health of an individual. Community cohesion is about changing this. Community Cohesion is about building communities in which everyone feels they can belong. It is also about people in those communities being able to make reasonable choices about how they live, whatever their circumstances.

Building community cohesion is as much about building hope and aspiration as it is about confronting fears and prejudices. Action for Social Integration believes interaction between different communities in our society needs to be promoted in order to counteract intolerance, ignorance, and scare-mongering, prejudice and discrimination. Our community cohesion agenda concerns the whole community and strives to create an environment where there is acknowledgement and valuing of diversity. We welcome the Government's recognition that respect for diversity is an essential part of building a successful society and needs to take place within a common framework of rights and responsibilities that are recognised by, and applied to all. In general, community cohesion encompasses issues of citizenship, identity and belonging that takes into account the rights of freedom of expression, association, assembly, belief and respect for family life.

We also recognise that community cohesion is multi-dimensional and needs to be embedded in existing mainstream policy context.

After all, community cohesion is all about building better understanding and tolerance within and between our communities, and this should be the responsibility of us all and not left with government ministers and national policies and strategies!

The promotion of mutual respect, trust, co-operation, understanding and tolerance across communities are keys to community cohesion.

This can be achieved by:

• Creating opportunities for people from different local communities to connect and meet openly and share the history and customs of their respective traditions and cultures.
• At a local level help combat discrimination on the basis of race, religion, belief, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age.
  
  Community cohesion incorporates and goes beyond the concept of race equality and social inclusion. A cohesive community is one where:
  
  
• There is a common vision and a sense of belonging for all communities;
• The diversity of people's different backgrounds and circumstances are appreciated and positively valued;
• Those from different backgrounds have similar life opportunities;
• Strong and positive relationships are being developed between people from different backgrounds in the work place, in schools and within neighbourhoods

Our Community Cohesion programme aims to building positive relationships between white and BME communities and also between different BME communities.

An essential part of this will be to address the exclusion that many BME communities experience within their local communities. Exclusions can occur for a variety of reasons including poverty, racism, language barriers, and lack of participation and, in the case of refugees, trauma and lack of confidence. Exclusion may hamper the socio-economic contribution to the community from asylum seekers, refugees and other people from BME communities.

Community cohesion requires helping beneficiaries by providing appropriate support and an engagement to gain new skills, confidence and motivation to access services. Taken as a whole, ethnic minority groups are more likely than the rest of the population to be unemployed, have low incomes, live in poor housing, have poor health and be the victims of crime'. Policies tackling social exclusion should consider the impact on ethnic minorities and appropriate steps should be taken to ensure that multiple disadvantage experienced by ethnic minorities is effectively tackled. Living in a foreign country as an asylum seeker , a refugee or an immigrant looking for opportunities is itself a big a major disadvantage which results in fear, powerlessness, isolation, and lack of confidence and motivation in access to rights and services.

This means building the needs of these communities into the mainstream but also accepting that an extra dimension may be needed to account for particular cultural/language/religious differences and to bridge the major gap in outcomes that these communities experience across the full range of public services.

To promote community cohesion, Action for Social Integration will organise activities around the following strategy:

Key Priorities

• Facilitate and support the participation refugees and BME communities in local activities for leisure, learning, volunteering and decision-making processes.
• Represent our service users in decision-making arrangements to ensure they reflect the make-up of local communities.
• Organising cultural events which develop cross-community contact and promote inter-cultural and inter-faith understanding and respect.
• Provide appropriate training (e.g. ESOL) and access to community learning opportunities and relevant information.

Engaging and supporting young people

By providing tailored support to young people, Action for Social Integration will help to ensure that young people receive the necessary advice and support to make a smooth transition to adulthood. For many young people, especially those who are from refugee and BME communities, ASI will be an important source of support. Youth services will be developed with a specific focus on increasing community cohesion, engage and support young people, enable them to have their voices heard.

Our Key objectives in supporting Children and Young People are:

• Provide opportunities for young people to engage and interact with other young people from different backgrounds;
• Organise activities that improve support to alienated young people reduce the disaffection amongst some youth.
• Providing appropriate 'things to do' for young people.
• Organising cultural events which open up children and young people's contacts across communities;
• Fostering inter-cultural contact between young people
• Enable children and young people to make a positive contribution to society, e.g. as volunteers.
• Encourage the inclusion and participation of children and young people in decision-making in their community, e.g. engaging in local democracy, school councils, youth forums.
• Ensure young people have access to advice regarding their rights
• Organising activities via discussions, arts-based activities, residential activities, outdoor education, and sports activities;
• Engaging and supporting young people

By providing tailored support to young people, Action for Social Integration will help to ensure that young people receive the necessary advice and support to make a smooth transition to adulthood. For many young people, especially those who are from refugee and BME communities, ASI will be an important source of support. Youth services will be developed with a specific focus on increasing community cohesion, engage and support young people, enable them to have their voices heard.

Our Key objectives in supporting Children and Young People are:

• Provide opportunities for young people to engage and interact with other young people from different backgrounds;
• Organise activities that improve support to alienated young people reduce the disaffection amongst some youth.
• Providing appropriate 'things to do' for young people.
• Organising cultural events which open up children and young people's contacts across communities;
• Fostering inter-cultural contact between young people
• Enable children and young people to make a positive contribution to society, e.g. as volunteers.
• Encourage the inclusion and participation of children and young people in decision-making in their community, e.g. engaging in local democracy, school councils, youth forums.
• Ensure young people have access to advice regarding their rights
• Organising activities via discussions, arts-based activities, residential activities, outdoor education, and sports activities;