How we can Stand Up Against Racism for ourselves and for others – from engaging in politics and education to reporting hate crime and how to respond when confronted with racism.
Lord Sonny Leong CBE was awarded a CBE for Political Service in 2014 and elevated to the House of Lords in 2022 as Baron Leong CBE of Chilton and Camden Town. He is the Shadow Spokesperson for Business & Trade in the House of Lords. He is the Chief Executive of Civil Service College, an international training provider for public sector staff. He serves on the Council for Education in the Commonwealth and the advisory panel of the Changing Work Centre.
He founded and was the CEO of Cavendish Publishing until its acquisition in 2006. He created and led several charitable organisations including the Commonwealth Caribbean Law Publishing Programme, AccessBooks for promoting publishing skills in Africa, Book Power providing reduced-price textbooks in developing countries, the MuLan Foundation Network for promoting inclusion for the British South and South East Asian community, and FutureFirst for building alumni networks for state school students.
The 4 Sessions
1. Conversations with ESEA Councillors
Alex Yip Birmingham City Council (Conservative), Katie Thornburrow Cambridge City Council (Labour) and Linda Chung London Borough of Camden (Liberal Democrats) shared their motivation for becoming politicians, any experience of racism they may have encountered and what their Council may be doing to tackle hate crime/racism in their constituencies.
2. Education
What part does Education play in Representation to diverse pupils when learning through English Literature in an ever evolving global context? This was the question discussed in conversation with a panel of authors and educators.
Maisie Chan is a children author. She wrote the Tiger Warrior series - fantasy books for young readers. Together with her editor, Georgia Murray, she won the BRANFORD BOASE AWARD 2022 for 'Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths'. Her new novel 'Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu' is up for the Glasgow YA-Aldi Book Awards 2023, and was shortlisted for the Juniper Book Awards 2023.
Dr Hannah Ho is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Her research includes the medical humanities, cultural histories and identities, and intersections between gender and nation in contemporary literature. She has published on Bruneian, Singaporean and Malaysian literature. She is a firm believer in the power of stories, and the social mirroring that takes place within them.
Angelina Wong-Jardin is an independent author and founder of Fish Tales & Rhymes. After 14 years of working across different countries in the fields of tech and education Marketing, she decided to pursue her passion for language and culture and launch a four book series of bilingual music sound books featuring Chinese nursery rhymes in 2022.
Eva Wong Nava is a children's book author and advocate for more ESEA representation and diversity in children's books published in the United Kingdom. She combines degrees in English Literature and Art History and was a former English teacher in London. She believes that self-acceptance and self-love starts from infancy when children can see themselves mirrored in the pages of books.
3. On Your Side
ESEA hate crime data and reporting hate crime
Voice ESEA presented data from police forces across the UK outlining level of reported hate crime targeting ESEA communities in 2021.
Protection Approaches presented the The On Your Side Service, why it’s needed and lessons learned since launch.
Andy Fearn is Co-Exec Director at Protection Approaches a leading UK-wide charity working to prevent all forms of identity-based violence where he Project Manages the On Your Side support and reporting service. Andy has more than a decade of experience working in prevention identity-based violence including leading national cohesion building projects in Rwanda and major national and regional community-based hate prevention programmes across the UK.
Yinsey Wang is a co-founder of the anti-racism organisation Voice ESEA, which focusses on raising awareness of the experiences of East and Southeast Asians in the UK. Currently, she is part of the project implementation team. She was involved in collating information from UK forces to provide more granular statistics on the scale of hate crimes against ESEAs. Outside of her participation in Voice ESEA, Yinsey is an asset management lawyer and a hobbyist artist.
Tra My Hickin is based at the Charity Protection Approaches and is lead on communications for On Your Side, the first UK-wide support and reporting service dedicated for East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) communities. Alongside working with OYS, Trà My works on the Community hub project at SEEAC where she helps identify the needs of ESEA communities and facilitates workshops. She is on the Steering Panel of the An Viet Foundation Archives, the largest known collection of British-Vietnamese history in the UK
Pat Davey is lead researcher and content creator for the SAFE by CST programme. Prior to joining CST, Pat was a police officer with Hertfordshire Constabulary, where he spent 17 years in various roles including front line and community policing. His final role in Hertfordshire constabulary was as a hate crime police officers, responsible for the creation and implementation of hate crime training packages ifor officers and external agencies. Before joining the police, Pat has worked for the NHS and Hertfordshire social services.
4. Keeping Safe
How other ethnic communities have delt with hate crime, as well as how we might respond when confronted with racist and hate crimes situations.