Calling volunteers across the North!

RJN VOLUNTEER PROGRAMME 2024

About the Programme

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our 2024 Volunteer Programme at the Racial Justice Network (RJN).

We are looking for people who are:

Interested in or share our vision and mission Committed to ending racial justice and the power of grassroots activism Creative and want to share time, knowledge, skills and capacities to build community power

Who We Are

Founded in 2014 by people with lived experience of racial injustice, the Racial Justice Network brings together groups, organisations and individuals across West Yorkshire to proactively promote racial justice.

Our vision is the end of racial injustice. Our mission is to address the legacies of colonialism through holistic, societal, environmental, spiritual and cultural repair and transformation.

Our Values and Positionality

Our work is rooted in transformative and reparative justice and anti-racism. We practise this through our values of learning, collaboration, centering those who are most marginalised and staying true to our vision and purpose.

Current Projects

Race and Climate Justice: The Racial Justice Network’s (RJN) ‘Race and Climate Justice’ (RCJ) project emerged from a very necessary response to the absence of an internationalist and reparatory approach in local responses to raising awareness around climate crises. This response gave birth to the 13th Recommendation.

The 13th Recommendation (referred to as the ‘13th’) is a framework that underpins the ‘Race and Climate Justice’ project within RJN. The three tenets advocated within the 13th are internationalism, acknowledging colonial legacies and activist solidarity.

Stop the Scan: A collaborative campaign led by RJN and Yorkshire Resists, that seeks to challenge the ever-expanding use of mobile biometrics in police stop and search practices, which are closely tied to Home Office data. Taking a holistic approach, the campaign aims to address the harms of racist technologies and policing within an anti-racist and abolitionist framework. This means tracing the technology as a colonial legacy, recognising its broader ecosystem and ideology, and addressing how the wider struggle against police tech with other RJN campaigns and community groups.

International solidarity: We are committed to fighting racial injustice beyond borders by working in solidarity with our siblings globally. Our current work includes an International Symposium that honours the work and life of Elder and Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

We also use our platforms to informing and influence through:

Engaging with institutions and decision-makers to influence public policies, bills and institutional practices.  Highlighting issues facing racialised communities through our research and reports Supporting individuals and groups to tackle injustice by emboldening confidence, building skills and solidarity and run effective campaigns.

Volunteer Roles

There are a variety of exciting roles you could play, based on your particular interests, skills, experience and more! Some of them include:

Campaigner: Community mobilising and organising are essential to our work. You may want to be involved in bringing people together, to the movements and organising creative actions that seek to amplify our campaign demands.

Researcher: Across all our campaigns, we use reports as a tool to inform and influence. Our reports are framed under a race lens, using evidence, statistics, research and real lived-experiences to draw out and expose historical and current institutional and systemic racism. A researcher may be tasked with making Freedom of Information requests to public bodies, collating data, holding focus groups and supporting analysis.

Educator: If you enjoy facilitating, holding space and/or teaching people, you may be interested in supporting us in workshops, trainings and skills-sharing sessions.

Community Builder: This may look like joining our team on community walkabouts, community workshops and public grassroots events, to get to know and understand what’s coming up for black and brown communities in our localities, This directly informs what work we prioritise and resource, responding to the collective need.

Content Creator: Use storytelling to disrupt imperialist media narratives, and support building power and solidarity, sharing our own stories. This could look like contributing to blogs, articles, creating content for campaigns, supporting the building of a podcast and much more!

What We Offer

We recognise that traditional volunteering can often be exploitative, undervaluing the vital contributions of individuals. At RJN, we aim to create a supportive community where your work is valued and impactful. Some of the ways we do this include:

Regular volunteer convenings (project specific)  Volunteer-related expenses will be covered (travel and food) for in-person activities Becoming a Member of our Racial Justice Network, and part of our ecosystem of community organisers, campaigners, activists and elders who collaborate with.  An optional bespoke training programme that focuses on building skills vital to the racial justice movement such as workshops on: community building, creative storytelling, understanding collective care & repair in campaigns.  Pastoral and peer support  We will provide a DBS check where needed

We deeply, unapologetically and intentionally centre the most marginalised people and communities. To this end, we welcome expressions of interest from people of majority world (global majority) heritage, racialised as Black and brown, and/or have a lived experience of migration, particularly those with experience of the asylum process or the hostile environment. We also welcome people racialised as white who are engaged in personal work of unlearning their conditioning into maintaining the status quo and have a deep commitment to ‘showing up’ for racial justice.

Expression of Interest

If you’re interested in volunteering with us, please complete this form or sign up using the link below by the 6th of October 2024. We will respond by mid November to arrange a short call to discuss your interests and availability.

For questions, more information or for access support to fill the form, please contact info@racialjusticenetwork.co.uk

Join us in building community power and fighting for racial justice!