The Swale Special Interest Group

As a Charity aimed at empowering, strengthening, and building the capacity of disadvantaged community groups, particularly those with a black minority and ethnic background; Diversity House created this Special Interest Group (SIG) in 2008. It used the Learning Alliance approach to work on issues of equality and diversity in the health area for BME Communities in Swale. This SIG is a part of our strategy of implementing innovative pilot experiences that will demonstrate new ways of promoting health equality among BME communities in the Borough of Swale. It is also a channel of developing progressive ways of transferring knowledge and engaging with different local stakeholders in the health sector in Swale.

The first SIG health summit was held in June 2009 it was tagged “Cardio Vascular Diseases summit for BME Communities in Swale” this was to promote knowledge, give information and advice on blood pressure, diabetes, strokes and other health related issues to BME communities in Swale.

In March 2010 a workshop with BME communities in Swale was conducted, with the purpose of raising awareness on learning disabilities as well as identifying the services available to them.

In October 2010 a summit was held to look at how community cohesion could contribute to health and health outcomes. The summit was titled “Community Cohesion comes to Swale in Kent”. This took the SIG project out of the borough level and into the county level. It also drew in the support from ICOCO and IDE&A