During the financial year, Aberdeen Ethnic Minority Women's Group CIC delivered extensive community benefits across Aberdeen, focusing on socio-economically isolated urban areas including Torry, Woodside, Tillydrone, Mastrick, Northfield, Garthdee, and Seaton. Operating entirely through volunteer labour and director resource allocations, the organisation established an active network of over 90 registered members representing more than 30 nationalities. Key activities and community benefits delivered during the period include: 1. Civic Leadership & Institutional Engagement: Coordinated a historic, first-of-its-kind women's conference held directly within the Aberdeen City Council Chambers. This landmark event was designed and delivered by ethnic minority women specifically for ethnic minority women, establishing a direct bridge to local governance. Additionally, hosted a major cross-cultural solidarity event for 60 women and children at the Aberdeen Art Gallery to build regional civic resilience. 2. Circular Economy & Skills Programmes: Deployed zero-waste textile repair workshops and creative upcycling sessions at regional eco-festivals and local learning centres, promoting environmental sustainability and practical craft skills. 3. Crisis Intervention & Safeguarding Support: Developed and executed targeted domestic abuse awareness modules across faith-based and community venues, providing peer-led intervention channels and continuous practical, multilingual support for isolated families. 4. Educational Rights & Strategic Policy Advocacy: Conducted direct advocacy to secure school placements for minor children facing prolonged administrative delays. Contributed localised lived-experience data panels to national legislative consultations, including the Scottish Housing Bill and wider domestic abuse policy and legal reforms. 5. Workplace & Governance Equality Campaigning: Advanced strategic campaigns advocating for robust representation of minority women of colour within board leadership structures. Challenged existing workplace compliance by campaigning for enhanced, comprehensive training models addressing protected characteristics, specifically targeting discrimination and harassment related to race, religion, and sexual harassment. 6. Enterprise Development: Formulated the "Sunflower Model" cooperative social enterprise concept to support micro-business incubation, peer-to-peer mentoring, and financial independence paths for marginalised women. 7. The organisation has also entered advisory collaborations with institutional partners, including NHS Grampian, to support health equity initiatives and anti-racism action plans moving forward.

During the financial year, the organisation conducted extensive, continuous consultations with both community stakeholders and institutional partners to ensure its initiatives directly targeted the systemic barriers faced by ethnic minority women and families in Aberdeen. Consultation methodologies and key outcomes delivered during the period include: 1. Community-Embedded Consultations & Framework Validation: Utilising a framework of relational ethnography, the organisation conducted ongoing longitudinal engagement within trusted, informal environments, including church halls, local community centres, private homes, coffee shops, and practical craft settings such as our "Happy Dolls" upcycling workshops. This allowed more than 90 members across 30 nationalities to safely highlight structural gaps in regional infrastructure, directly informing our core community responses. Crucially, the extensive field observations derived from this ongoing, longitudinal community engagement fully validated our relational ethnography model, proving it to be a high-fidelity mechanism for capturing data that traditional, institutional feedback methods miss. 2. The Institutional Neutrality & Child Welfare Principle: Throughout all consultation and advocacy pathways, the organisation maintained a strict institutional neutrality clause. The organisation explicitly operates on the principle that support is extended to families regardless of past history or complex domestic background, positioning absolute focus on immediate child welfare. By preserving this neutrality, the organisation safely intervenes to protect and nurture the child as a vital future citizen, preventing downstream state crisis intervention and safeguarding childhood development from systemic fractures. 3. Civic & Local Governance Consultations: Coordinated three formal, landmark women's conferences held directly within the Aberdeen City Council Chambers. These historic events were designed and delivered by ethnic minority women specifically for ethnic minority women, establishing a direct, first-of-its-kind consultative bridge to local governance, councillors, and Members of Parliament regarding health equity, integration barriers, and educational resource allocations. 4. Digital Advocacy & Legislative Policy Consultations: Amplified the reach of these landmark conferences through a strategic online presence, which served as a platform to directly brief local and Scottish Government representatives. Lived-experience data panels and direct testimonies were presented to politicians and policymakers to highlight severe systemic gaps in domestic abuse policies. Specifically, the consultations detailed how cross-border and international Child Maintenance Service (CMS) collections are weaponised by perpetrators, and how forced post-separation contact arrangements severely deteriorate the mental health and safety of minority women and minor children. This vital policy dialogue was maintained through comprehensive, ongoing executive email briefings to ensure continuous institutional awareness. 5. Environmental & Just Transition Consultations: Organised and led dedicated community consultations and curated eco-feminist walks to ensure the distinct perspectives and priorities of ethnic minority women were formally captured and contributed to regional "Just Transition" policy frameworks, bridging the gap between climate strategy and social inclusion. 6. National Policy Consultation: The lived experience data gathered through our community feedback panels was compiled and actively contributed to national legislative consultations, directly influencing the current Scottish Housing Bill. 7. Institutional Health & Equity Partnerships: Established formal advisory collaborations with NHS Grampian to support their upcoming Anti-Racism Action Plan. This includes commissioning a targeted maternity services health needs assessment to capture the lived experiences of minority women, bridge communication gaps, and improve institutional accountability standards. 8. Regional Enterprise Dialogue: Initiated brief, exploratory talks regarding "The Women's Shed" business incubator concept to highlight the collective needs of our 90-strong membership and advocate for women-centric business support. While structural engagement through Business Gateway presented significant operational difficulties and did not materialise further during this period, regional representatives from Aberdeenshire Council demonstrated a distinctly positive and responsive approach to understanding these systemic barriers.

No remuneration was received

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration