People with disabilities share experiences for Wigan’s Equality Week

Working alongside local community organisations, the council will launch an online programme to help raise awareness of some of the issues people with disabilities face and celebrate the many contributions they make to the borough.

A community cohesion event will offer local organisations the chance to explore how all aspects of equality and inclusion could be improved in the borough.

Lead Member for Equalities, Coun Paula Wakefield, said: “One of our key principles at Wigan Council is ensuring everyone has the same opportunities and people feel like they belong and are included.

“In our most recent Public Sector Duty Report we set out our equality aims for 2021, to ensure that the borough is fair and inclusive.

“Alongside our public sector partners, businesses, community organisations and residents we have identified confronting local inequalities as a key part of the recovery priorities for the borough, following the pandemic.

“The Equality Week is important because it will give us opportunities to continue that conversation with partners and residents and make sure that the work is moving in the right direction.”

The cohesion event on Wednesday 29 September will feature speakers from the Sophie Lancaster foundation, an organisation set up in memory of Sophie, who was murdered as part of a hate crime in 2007 and campaigns to end prejudice and intolerance.

Speakers from the Peace Foundation, a charity which has worked for peace internationally since the murder of Tim Parry and Jonathan Ball in the IRA’s Warrington bombings in 1997, will also share their ideas on cohesion at the event.

They will be joined by representatives from local community organisations Happy Smiles, who work with young adults with disabilities, and Everything Human Rights, who support asylum seekers and refugees.

The Equality Week which runs from September 27 to October 3 coincides with National Inclusion Week and will also give everyone in the borough the chance to have their say, as the council’s engagement programme, the Big Listening Festival, will focus on equality.

Debra said: “Inclusion is not just about ramps and accessibility, although of course those things are important.

“Everybody in society could make a difference to one person.

“It’s about respect. Respecting each other as people and as individuals.”

To take part in the council’s Big Listening Festival engagement on equality click hereWant to see fewer ads? Subscribers to Wigan Today get access to the ad-lite version of our website, which features 70% fewer ads and faster load times for a better experience. Find out more here