The Equality & Inclusion Awareness Project

Many people face challenges in accessing services which can help them achieve in areas of life such as education, training and making a contribution to their community. These challenges are often compounded by additional factors, they maybe from a minority ethnic background, identify as gay, lesbian or transgender or have a disability. People may be suffering because of socio-economic factors such as unemployment or debt or may have mental health difficulties.

Discrimination means that often such people, or groups of people, receive less favourable treatment, they often find themselves outside of the ‘norm’ and may have great difficulty in accessing the support and services they need.
Over the coming months we will use a variety of means to raise awareness around the issues of equality and inclusion and through our aims intend to challenge discrimination and exclusion.

The Equality & Inclusion Awareness Project is being developed to explore what the terms ‘equality’ and ‘inclusion’ mean in a broader legislative sense, for our diverse communities here in Killaloe/Ballina and for ourselves as Family Resource Centre serving the needs of the community.

KBFRC’s Statement of Values describes our dedication to “the provision of quality services which ensure and promote the core values of respect, equality and inclusion.” As a community resource, KBFRC needs to find new, innovative ways to engage with the community and offer supports and services that are relevant and based on need. Our commitment to the guiding principles in this statement must be renewed and reflected on and be translated into work practices that ensure a competency underpinned by the values of equality and inclusion.

For us equality is the notion that everybody has equal value and has the right to equal status, respect, dignity and opportunity.
Equality is not always about treating people the same, it is about treating people in such a way that the outcome for each person can be the same. This means being inclusive by putting things in place to support people to achieve similar outcomes and to feel a sense of belonging, engaged and connected.

We value all individuals and are committed to working ‘actively’ to improve access and opportunity for all. We aim to find ways that we can combat discrimination and other barriers to involvement through this project by

* raising awareness of groups who are often discriminated against
* raise awareness of diversity and people’s rights
* highlighting the positive effects of anti – discriminatory, inclusive ways of engagement
* increase diversity of those included in decision making (including Board of Management and future planning and design)
* improving access to services
* supporting social inclusion for a more diverse range of expression and identity

Under Irish equality legislation, it is unlawful to discriminate on nine grounds, over the coming months we will be focussing on each of these. You can access a range of information on each of the grounds by clicking on those marked with an o below;

	Gender
	Civil Status
	Family Status
	Religion
	Sexual Orientation
	Age
	Disability
	Race (including Colour, Nationality, Ethnic or National Origins) or
	Membership of the Traveller Community