West Yorkshire Citizens Annual General Meeting!

On Friday 4th April, 70 members from 12 institutions of West Yorkshire Citizens gathered at Dixons Trinity Academy, Bradford, to hold our Annual General Meeting. Between all the necessary business we had a great time getting to meet each other, celebrating the work we have done together and planning for the future. Thank you so much to everyone who came and took part!

We had musical contributions to start and finish from the Dixons Choir, and from Lydia at Chapel FM – thank you so much for your inspiration! Our meeting was then seamlessly chaired by our West Yorkshire Co-chairs Tony Macaluso (Chapel FM) and Jim Lauder (Dixons Trust), Eve Maloba (Complete Woman CiC), Adam, Esha and Khizer (Dixons Sixth Form), and Min Duyen (Leeds Beckett Students’ Union) our timekeeper, who made sure that we all finished early.

We looked back at our work over the last year or so, with stories from Sharon Hill (Connecting Crossgates) about poor housing for those aged over 55, the Co-op Leeds about their work with Roma students, and Oluwaniyi OJO (LBSU) about the campaigns for better pay for part-time work and employment opportunities. The Bradford team also shared around the mental health campaign and an update from their recent Delegates Day around Racial Equity.

Celebrating wins always brings the joy, and Mike Austin (LBSU) came to share the news with us that Leeds Beckett SU have agreed to become a Real Living Wage employer. Well done! A great moment for all of the students and staff that work for them and a commitment to a fairer way of working. Eve then brought an update from the Migrant Health and Social Care Workers campaign, which is listening to the experiences of care workers being exploited. They have already met with the Home Office team in our region to share their concerns and build relationships.

Winnie Chinyadza (LBSU) and Oscar Moussima (Chapel FM) spoke about the Buses campaign – it was a packed update with much to tell. This campaign team have been very busy locally and with other teams across the North taking action to improve public transport. They have met with local councillors, MPs and regional mayors to discuss their ask of implementing a citizens accountability board into the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, to give decision-making power on transport to the people in the region. Five institutions working regularly with this work, with many others supporting them.

After our 121s, we moved to looking forward to working together over the next year – on the Buses campaign (Peter Cordwell - Leeds Methodists), the Racial Justice in Education campaign (Dixons Trinity students), and the Social Care campaign (Donna Eastham – Leeds Trinity University). Each of the campaign teams urged leaders from across the chapter to nominate leaders to their action teams, where self-interest aligned. Our campaign teams must be strong and broad-based to succeed, so please do get in touch with these teams via the contact info provided or your local organiser to find out more!

Jim then brought our launch of Chapter-wide listening to find out what is putting pressure on our communities – and we can start now! We are aiming to hold issues workshops in the week beginning the 20th October, with a Delegates Assembly after that. We all will need to develop our current campaigns and see if there are other issues on which we want to take action together.

We then all paused as Shirley Watson (Beckfoot Trust) gave us a timely reminder of how working together as diverse institutions is our power, and a personal reflection of how, for her, the personal is political and built on deep relationships and understanding.

After that came the necessary work on finances from Joe Barnes (Leeds Sanctuary) and Leadership Team elections (Eve and Steven Burgess, LBSU) as we organised our money and our people. We recognised that times were financially difficult for many of our members, but that we were an alliance that is built from the power of our collective dues together. Please do contact your organiser to talk more about finances if you wish.

We are aiming to hold elections to the Leadership Team at our Delegates Assembly and there is now a solid process to enable this to happen demoractically. Our leadership needs to be active, diverse and representative, and we would genuinely welcome your nominations! Again, please do speak to your organiser.

We closed by looking ahead to our actions this term, including Young People’s actions around Racial Justice on the 4th July, and by noting that Citizens UK now has a fourth strategic aim around building Relationships across Difference (Do you know what the other three are?) We are looking forward to building on this aim over the next year. We will be holding the West Yorkshire Citizens Delegates Assembly in winter 2025, the date will be announced soon!

A huge thanks to everyone who took part, and to everyone who helped with planning and shaping the meeting even if they could not attend.

Our next regional training is on 28th/29th April in central Leeds and there are still spaces available. Local training is free to all of our members. After that, the next session is planned for 7th/8th July in Bradford. Please see below for our full schedule of upcoming training dates for 2025.