Diversifying Voices on Climate Change is a three-year Lottery funded project which will tackle the barriers to action on climate change for Black and Minority Ethnic women in Wales. Based at Women Connect First office in Cardiff, the project will reach out to women of colour across Wales in an effort to significantly alter perceptions and challenge stereotypes around who can and does take action around climate change. To achieve this, we will be taking a number of approaches.

Working with partner organisations, the project will recruit women from across diverse communities and sectors and provide them with media training, empowering them to create relatable and accessible social media content which will promote the work of women of colour in Wales and further afield already engaged in climate action.

The project will also encourage and support women who are new to social action. Through a programme of events and activities, the project will demonstrate the relevance of climate change issues to the lives of our target groups, linking it to the cost of living crisis, energy use and lifestyle choices, as well as making clear how climate change is already devastating lives in many of the countries where our beneficiaries have family members. Diversifying Voices will collect the views of BAME women, as well as their practical ideas about how we in Wales can help to combat climate change, and will communicate these ideas with Welsh policy makers.

Girls and young women will also have opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge and gain the confidence to speak up on environmental issues through a Nature and Climate Focused Duke of Edinburgh Award for girls. Already piloted in the Riverside area of Cardiff, this initiative will now be extended to other locations in South Wales through the Diversifying Voices project