Chamber and committees

The Promoting Equality and Cohesion Fund initially ran from 2017 to 2020, and was then extended to October 2021 due to the impacts of covid-19. It was superseded by a revised funding programme: the current Equality and Human Rights Fund.

The Promoting Equality and Cohesion Fund was used to fund projects that would contribute to one or more of four outcomes:

• Discrimination against people who share protected characteristics is reduced and multiple discrimination is addressed so that barriers to participation are reduced.
• People covered by hate crime legislation experience lower levels of hate crime.
• People and communities are supported to participate in and engage with services and civic society; their contribution is recognised, and community cohesion is increased.
• Current imbalances in representation in all aspects and levels of public life, including education and employment are addressed to better reflect our communities

The “STAR Project” was funded to provide emergency humanitarian and integration assistance to vulnerable asylum seekers in Glasgow. There were three aspects to the work:

1. Providing asylum support to individuals facing immediate crisis (particularly destitution) coming through our Triage clinic.

2. Providing more in-depth and specialist casework support and advocacy

3. Gathering an effective evidence base

The specific outcomes to be achieved were:

• The impact of crisis facing individual asylum seekers will be mitigated, enabling people to experience fewer barriers to participation
• Information will be collected and shared, and key advocacy points developed, to work together with other key stakeholders towards a longer term solution

The Fund was managed on a day to day basis on the Scottish Government’s behalf by Impact Funding Partners initially and then Inspiring Scotland. You can find a Final Progress Update report for the Fund summarising its impacts here: Promoting-Equality-and-Cohesion-Fund-Final-Report-Jan-Sep-2021-for-SG-publication.pdf