What would I do if elected to GPEX as Equalities & Diversity Co-ordinator?

As part of my election campaign for the Green Party Executive (GPEX) Equalities and Diversity Co-ordinator, I wanted to share a number of the key activities I would hope to to take forward if I was elected to serve by the membership:

Organisational change:

• Act as an advocate for equalities and diversity across our activities and bring that perspective explicitly to GPEX deliberations.
• Improve transparency in the role by providing regular reports to members, including using the Members website to communicate.
• Ensure that all activities and achievements are publicised regularly to the membership and demonstrate clear ways to get involved.
• Undertake an assessment of our membership application process to ensure we are collecting useful information on our members.
• Conduct regular analysis of our monitoring data and report progress to the membership.
• Consult with key stakeholders across the party and integrate these perspectives into a formal E&D strategy for the next two years.
• Build a robust network of activists across our local parties who will champion equalities and diversity work and feed ideas back to me.
• Investigate potential funding opportunities to support this programme of work, both from within and external to the Green Party.

Working with members:

• Meet regularly with the self-organised groups such as Green Women, Young Greens and LGBT Greens to ensure that their priorities are being communicated to GPEX.
• Build knowledge and capacity amongst self-organised groups to ensure that they are able to integrate their issues into the policy-making process.
• Work with self-organised groups to assist in making their activities and decision-making processes are transparent and accessible to members.
• Facilitate the creation of self-organisation for those groups of members currently under-represented in the Green Party.
• Facilitate working links between the various self-0rganised groups across the party, so that their outputs complement each other.
• Organise fringe events at the Green Party Conference to share best practice and raise the priority of equality and diversity within the membership.
• Work with Green Party Conference organisers to build upon recent improvements in accessibility and engagement for disabled members.

Outreach beyond the Green Party:

• Follow up on the excellent report undertaken by members into BME engagement with the Green Party and try to roll out some of their findings more widely.
• Make links with national organisations campaigning on equalities issues and build formal partnerships around key policy issues.
• Encourage external organisations to attend Green Party Conference and participate in fringe events.
• Support members conducting outreach work to under-represented groups, such as ethnic minority and disabled communities.

I hope this is a representative example of the work I hope to take forward over the next two years. I'm keen that this isn't a one-man band, so hope that some of this programme of action excites you into getting involved. If you think I've missed something fundamental out, please get in touch (stephen_a_wood@yahoo.co.uk).