This October, the EDI group at Winston’s Wish marked Black History Month by scheduling personal development work for the organisation to get involved in. Each member of the team was asked to dedicate two hours of their paid work time to developing their understanding and awareness of black history. At the end of October, each team gathered to reflect on their learning and to challenge and broaden their own understandings.

The organisation shared a plethora of resources amongst each other; from podcasts to articles to books to TV shows, the team found many ways to engage with the topic.

As an EDI group, we chose to begin our learning inside of our organisation and focus on what we could do this year as a charity to be more equipped and prepared to understand the impact black history has on lives today.

The teams shared their reflections on a digital whiteboard together, which you can see in the image below.

Overall, there were some general themes and comments that came through. A lot of our team reflected on how interesting it was to revisit history through a different lens and highlighted how very one-sided the British history we’ve learned really is. Other themes included the importance of recognising the use of language and the benefit the team would feel from inviting a guest speaker to the organisation.

Each of the comments and reflections are anonymous and have been shared by team members; they are not representative of a collectivist Winston’s Wish view.