Newham Council is working with residents, volunteers and partners to increase social integration across the borough. An event held by Newham Council at its Dockside offices gave members of the voluntary sector the chance to shape the council’s new social integration strategy.
Around 50 members of the voluntary sector attended the event to discuss how the council can increase social integration within the borough.
Councillor Rohit Dasgupta, Commissioner for social integration and equalities, said: “This was an exercise that will feed into our social integration strategy. Social integration is about the ties that bring people together. A network of private and public relationships and interaction that turns a borough of individuals into a functioning community.
“These relationships inspire bonds of trust, solidarity, and also creates a sense of belonging for us. Social integration is not just about ethnicity but also about interaction with those who are different from us, in respect of age, religion, gender or sexuality.
“We don’t just want people to get along and tolerate each other, we actually want people to feel they are a part of a community, that there is actual engagement and connection with people.”
Newham Council has adopted the Mayor of London’s definition of social integration. This definition is: “Social Integration is the extent to which people positively interact and connect with others who are different from themselves. It is determined by the level of equality between people, the nature of their relationships, and their degree of participation in the communities in which they live.”
The diversity of the Newham means that social integration is particularly important within the borough, with 72 per cent of being from Black, Asian or other ethnic minority backgrounds, 27 per cent are not UK nationals, and 47 per cent were born outside the UK.
A number of key focuses we raised as part of the meeting. These included:
- Increasing economic prosperity for all the borough’s communities as an essential prerequisite for social integration;
- Strengthening relationships between the borough’s diverse communities;
- Building connections and strengthening relationships between young people who live in the borough’s diverse communities;
- Connecting the borough’s disadvantaged communities to shared spaces – linking people to employment, physical assets, and community shared spaces and social action
- Improving how the council engages with Newham's voluntary, community and faith sectors.