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A recommitment to our work in the UK1/7/2020 Do it Now Now (DINN) is an open innovation organisation driven by the desire to bring social empowerment to Black communities across the globe. We bring charities, social entrepreneurs, startup teams, social innovators, investors, and philanthropists together to address social challenges, solve problems and support the development of Black communities specifically. We do this through entrepreneurship training and support in 6 African countries and in the UK.
When we launched DINN 4 years ago, we were piecing together an ecosystem to support Black people who are systematically removed from the existing entrepreneurship ecosystem of support globally. We sought to design the experience of entrepreneurship anew for Black and mixed with Black people around the world. To do that, we have had to work closely with our community to understand their needs. By identifying and engaging with key stakeholders across the entire business support landscape we can design programs that truly meet the needs of our beneficiaries. We have an established track record, financed largely by consultancy work we have done with organisations like Google, Goldsmiths University, the British Council and others. This gives us the opportunity to continue supporting Black entrepreneurs who are unable to access paid services elsewhere. We have run 54 entrepreneurship training programs supporting over 8000 Black entrepreneurs in the UK and in Africa; 80% of our work has been with Black entrepreneurs in the UK. After a qualitative research study, we discovered that 78% of our beneficiaries identify as social enterprises and are primarily working on solutions to support Black people in the following areas:
As an organisation, Do it Now Now is poised to redress the deprivation of resources, skills and tools that inequality of resource allocation metes upon the Black community in the UK. Through the provision of training in leadership, activism and entrepreneurship, we empower Black people to engage actively and beneficially in the communities in which we live. The Black community has been very hard hit financially by COVID and that has had a very strong knock-on effect on the social enterprises and charities that are run by Black people in the UK. With the majority of the organisations, we support relying on grant funding, personal savings and in some cases pay-day loans to help them bridge the financial gap to deliver on their charitable objectives and social aims, the difficulty to access funding and the significant reduction in wages all of the population faces means that the Black community could potentially be irrevocably harmed by the current circumstances. The financial instability has left a significant support gap for the beneficiaries of our beneficiaries. We support enterprises that bridge the deeply felt gap of provision Black people experience across the UK. According to the Office of National Statistics, 19.6% of the Black population lives in the most deprived parts of the country, the highest of any racial group to be concentrated in deprived areas. There is an urgent need. If we don’t step in and intentionally support Black-led social enterprises and charities now, within the next 18 months, we will see a significant decrease in the community initiatives and projects run by Black-led social enterprises and charities that work to bridge the resource and support gap that Black people and other people of colour living in deprived areas in the UK experience. If you, like us, are concerned for the future of Black-led enterprises creating beneficial impact in local communities across the UK, please head to our donation page where you or your company can contribute to their support. Bayo Adelaja | Chief Do-er at Do it Now Now | This is how I got here
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We want to dedicate this post to those fighting for equality and justice by sharing helpful books, resources, and articles.
Throughout history, there have been moments that can be said to have been inflexion points in race relations. These moments shock our core beliefs as a society and force each of us to redefine who we are and who we want to be. The recent killings of Ahmaud Aubrey, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in America, are such moments. Like Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech" and his subsequent assassination, the election of Barack Obama and the subsequent election of Donald Trump, we are faced with a series of momentous occurrences that have sent shockwaves through global and local communities forcing each individual to come to terms with the society in which they exist, and perhaps for some, for the first time truly question the values, and belief systems their position in that society depends on. Bayo Adelaja shares our position. Books about Race
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This is why we centre Black people2/6/2020  Growing up, I found it difficult to understand why Blackness was considered to be some sort of cultural monolith. The experience of an African immigrant to the UK, being different from those of a 3rd generation Black British person, similarly the African immigrant to the US, being different from those of a 3rd generation Black American person. It seemed odd that the Black American experience should stand as a cultural proxy for all things Black, yet it does. That’s because, despite the nuances between the geographical and cultural experiences of Blackness globally, there are many more similarities that exist between us. I’m referring to the oppression; the subjugation, manipulation, corruption and exploitation of Black communities, bodies, futures and minds.
The common denominator of the Black experience around the world is efficiently described in the Langston Hughes poem, “I, too”. The poem is set in the realities of the Southern slave plantations whose masters were known to habitually rape their slaves resulting in mixed-race children. The children were afforded certain privileges while continuing to be significantly deprived of any of the rights associated with being an heir of the master’s household. In the poem, Hughes meekly argues for equal treatment between the subject of the poem, “the darker brother” and his siblings, completely unexpectant of a positive resolution despite his protests. Throughout history, there have been moments that can be said to have been inflexion points in race relations. These moments shock our core beliefs as a society and force each of us to redefine who we are and who we want to be. The recent killings of Ahmaud Arbrey, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in America, are such moments. Like Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech and his subsequent assassination, the election of Barack Obama and the subsequent election of Donald Trump, we are faced with a series of momentous occurrences that have sent shockwaves through global and local communities forcing each individual to come to terms with the society in which they exist, and perhaps for some, for the first time truly question the values, and belief systems their position in that society depends on. We are living through unprecedented times in which the gruesome death of a person can be shared with billions of people around the world. The disgusting, tyrannical and violent behaviour that led to the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbrey and Breonna Taylor have ignited a level of empathy across the world Black people do not usually receive. These are not the first deaths, these are not the first people that have been reduced to the incident in which they died. There have been a lot of hashtags and every time one of them trends, we instinctively consider the hundreds or thousands that didn’t. These unprecedented times have rightly re-ignited conversations concerning proper and effective allyship. However, allyship needs to extend beyond the marching of the masses into seats of power. Until people in power can effectively display their allyship with minority groups, beyond thoughts, prayers and condolences, all efforts to work within the framework that is provided to us by those people will fail to bring transformative change to nations and the globe. I often think about the murder of 14-year-old Mississippi boy, Emmett Till, who was lynched by an angry mob in 1955 because he was accused of touching a white woman. Emmett was innocent. 1955 wasn’t a long time ago. My mum was born in 1955. 8 years later, Martin Luther King Jr, gave his defining speech and was assassinated in 1969. The 60s saw many African countries gaining independence from their colonisers, the final country gaining independence in 1993. In the 70s, while other American racial groups were feeling “groovy baby”, Black Americans were fighting and dying for the rights to be seen, heard and valued as members of society. The end of South Africa’s Apartheid only began in 1994, before that, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. In 2017, we were reminded that Africans are still being sold into slavery around the world. Black people are currently experiencing extremely harsh discrimination in China, with many of them being forcibly evicted from their homes amid the COVID-19 crisis. Only a few weeks ago, I wrote about the systemic discrimination that significantly reduces opportunities for Black people in the UK to live healthy and satisfying lives. On every front, we are being collectively oppressed. For as long as this history has played out, our society has applauded the verbalisation of allyship without reaping the rewards of action associated with it. Beyond allyship, we need Black activists, entrepreneurs and leaders; Black people who will utilise their resources, access, tools, creativity, skills and lived experiences to fight off the oppression, and succeed through the trials and tribulations so that they can usher other Black people safely to the other side. Like the main character in the Langston Hughes poem, some individuals and innovators seek to redress the balance and aim to create a world in which the detrimental outcomes of racism no longer exist. Unlike the main character, our meekness has been replaced by righteous fury and passion for the development and empowerment of Black people globally. Until now, we have lived in a world in which the people with the power to change things have been complicit in the continued subjugation of our community by refusing to take opportunities to establish programs that will lead to transformative change and equality in our society. The people that are most in need of key solutions to aid social mobility should be the ones designing, and delivering them. However, with so few Black people being able to access the information, tools and resources needed to create authentic solutions to lived experiences, our future will continue to be held ransom by people who do not have a vested interest in our power and equality. Bayo Adelaja | Chief Do-er at Do it Now Now | This is how I got here
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Voluntarism is one of the most effective ways to engage in society because it helps individuals, gain skills, build stronger networks, gain new experiences and access new opportunities. However, the opportunity to access opportunities to volunteer effectively are not available to all.
Over the past few years, I have taken the time to distil the formula that led to my professional positioning and current level of experience and expertise and realised that I have gotten to the place I am in today because I saw an advert seeking volunteers at my local MPs office. I had just failed to get into the university of my choice and was so shocked by that revelation that I decided to take a year out to recalibrate, resit a couple of exams and then apply again. To justify my choice to my parents, I promised that I would spend the year volunteering. It wasn’t a promise I had taken very seriously and really rather considered it as an offer of self-punishment for having not secured the grades I needed. Before I actually experienced formal volunteering, the only type of volunteering I was familiar with was volunteering at church, which is valuable and a fantastic opportunity to give back to my own community, but the access that I was able to gain outside of my community through volunteering is what got me here. Advocating for voluntarism in the black community is about access. Voluntarism was not something I was taught in any sphere of my life, to see as an opportunity to achieve and access greater things. Before I started my role, I was more than prepared to sit in an office and file documents one after the other for hours on end or otherwise stare blankly into a computer screen while proofreading long policy and regulation manuals that I couldn’t possibly have cared less about. However, my volunteer managers had something much more interesting and dynamic planned for me. I admit before I started the role, for which I was properly interviewed, I had no real understanding of how MPs helped people or that MPs helped people. I didn’t engage with local services, and my immigration status actually specifically forbade me from doing so. Giving back to a system that had already been so difficult to navigate and had put such a strain on my parents as they sought to exist within it, make a living and adequately provide for their children, seemed nonsensical. Yet there was treasure hidden in the beige and brick walls of the MPs office, manned primarily by old ladies with a deep love for strong black tea and digestive biscuits. While there were moments of filing documents and proofreading proposals, there were many more moments that I spent speaking with constituents of the borough who had real problems and were hoping for real solutions. For six months, while I rarely saw people that looked like me sit in for meetings with the MP or his senior staff, I still felt seen and supported in those offices by people who were committed to ensuring I gained skills that would help me excel in the future. I learned about time management, customer management, project planning, budgets, database management and I soaked it all up. My enthusiasm for the opportunity must have come across because after those first few months, a job became available in the Westminster office and it was offered to me. My first real job made me the sole breadwinner of my family at that time, and the youngest professional employee of the House of Commons that year. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was enough to help out my family in our time of need. That voluntary opportunity came at a time that I needed it most and provided teaching that became so beneficial to me from that point on. More than that, it was that experience that taught me to choose first the thing that helps people, and secondly find the people that will seek to help you and third, weigh the financial reward that it promises. Those values have remained the core of my entire professional career. Over the past 10 years in the workforce, I have sought to imbibe those values in everything I have done, which invariably led me to the world of technology and social entrepreneurship. Perhaps not inevitably, but sincerely. My passion is to ensure that every Black person around the world has access to the tools and resources they need to become the fully realised most functional version of themselves. Unlike other demographic populations around the world, Black people, no matter the geographic location of our bodies, typically find ourselves disadvantaged in terms of social mobility and access. The two spaces that affect the development of our world more than any other are civil society and technology. Hence, for the past few years, here at Do it Now Now, we have been asking and seeking to provide answers to the question, “what do Black people need to succeed in this day and age?”, because if you help the lowest-ranked or least likely to succeed in a space, do so, you are inevitably building up the rest of the population that could seek to utilise those services in the future. That’s why we start from the Black perspective and have worked with many organizations to help them develop strategies from that perspective as well. By working with some of the leading organisations in the world, like Google for Startups, the British Council, PwC and others, we have learned, adapted and evolved as an organisation to better support Black people into better circumstances. I am excited to announce that I have an opportunity to do something extraordinary over the next few years. I have recently been appointed as a Trustee and Director of the Royal Voluntary Service in the UK. As the name suggests, the organisation, backed by The Royal Family, has a rich tradition of voluntarism that started with the second world war during which they engaged women to volunteer their time to the war effort; leading to a revolution that forever changed the country’s workforce as women became aware that they too are capable of work in all its forms. Today, Royal Voluntary Service is the leading voluntary organisation in support of the NHS and care facilities in communities across the country. I am honoured to have received the invitation to join the Trustee Board because I recognise the opportunity it will provide me to utilise my learning in a new context (which is always a joy), but also help an organisation that has such an incredible influence over an integral industry understand the needs of Black people (who are typically a proxy for other people of colour groups and people from low-income backgrounds) when it comes to engaging in voluntarism in the formal volunteering sector. One of our key goals as an organisation is to significantly contribute to the increase of formal voluntarism within the Black community in the UK. Currently, according to the Office of National Statistics. 48% of the UK’s Black community would like to be formally involved in their community, yet only 8% are doing so. We’d like to see this number rise (particularly for young people) because, as I hope my story exemplified, formal voluntarism bring real benefit to those who engage in it. It provides work experience, professional references, the opportunity to see the world through a new lens, and to get accustomed early to navigating the White spaces every Black person needs to learn to navigate to survive as a minority. Bayo Adelaja | Chief Do-er at Do it Now Now | This is how I got here
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It has taken me longer than I wanted to figure out what I wanted to say about this situation so awfully affecting the black population globally. My first draft was incendiary, my second draft was incomprehensible and this, my third attempt, I hope conveys the difficulty we face, acknowledges the preventability of some of the impact we are noticing and provides some thoughts on what we can do moving forward.
The black community globally is not one without issue. I recently saw a photograph of the rapper Andre3000 wearing a bomber jacket purporting a slogan that read, “Across cultures, darker people suffer most. Why?” It ignited a thought-spiral that begun with this statement and follow-up question: “The Black population is systematically oppressed by social policy decisions that negatively and disproportionately affect our wellbeing and financial stability. What is the potential long-term effect of this reality if it continues to go unchecked?” In this post, I’m exploring that question in light of the expected outcomes of the coronavirus in the UK. For context, I’d like to introduce you to the reality of Blackness in the UK:
The above figures are all according to the most recent reports by the Office of National Statistics who also state that 45% of the Black African population in the UK is living in poverty and 53% is on some form of government support. For comparison, 56% of the white population is in receipt of government support while 20% are living in poverty, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. In that final comparison, the disparity may be accounted for by “No Recourse to Public Funds” cases; Black African immigrants are living below the poverty line but are unable to claim any government support due to their immigration status. Finally, according to the British Heart Foundation, Black people are more likely to be living with co-morbidities that are worsened by the contraction of Coronavirus such as High blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. At the time of writing this post, data has not been released about the specific racial breakdown of the disproportionate amount of deaths of people of colour in the outbreak. However, we do know that, according to the BBC, despite making up only 14% of the population, people of colour represent 33% of Coronavirus in-patients. With that information as a backdrop to the current global pandemic we’re living through, a severe impact on the Black community is to be expected. We are at risk and we are dying. Yet we continue to be ineffectively supported. Unconscious bias is rife within the system that we have to rely on to save our lives. The people in the Black community in the UK have been repeatedly “gaslit” by the health system that in aggregate, won’t believe our pain is real. We are reliant on a system in which even our service is unwelcome. We don’t yet know what the overall figures look like, and we won’t be able to tell for a few years the extent of the long-term effect on our personhood as individuals or as a society. These are very tough times for everyone across all races and spheres of life. Despite the difficulty, it is time to press into change and innovation, to address challenges in real-time and curb disturbing trends before they can be described as willful negligence. Here are two possibilities: Address Unconscious Bias within the UK’s healthcare industry. A short term solution could make an incredible amount of difference in the immediate circumstances. I’m not suggesting the NHS shuts down for a 24 hour period to re-train staff, as Starbucks did when a member of their US staff was caught on video displaying extreme bias against a couple of black patrons. I am however suggesting that something can be done to help both medical and non-medical staff address and avoid occurrences like the one described in this The Independent newspaper article. Raise unemployed and self-employed support, to reflect full-time minimum wage across the country. Black people are typically financially unstable with a high rate of unemployment. The recession brought on by Coronavirus has led to hiring freezes and lay-offs across the country. Without the expectation of a somewhat immediate return to normalcy, even a short-term boost similar to that being provided for furloughed and self-employed workers could be an effective way to support groups, like the Black population, who are more likely at risk of financial ruin. With all of that said, I recognise the privilege I have in writing this post, speaking into the void without any responsibility or ability to affect change in these circumstances. I wholeheartedly applaud everyone working day in and day out on providing solutions to the problems they perceive and prioritise. It is my hope that as more people use their platforms to voice their concerns about the trajectory of this goings-on, we may collectively affect the direction of the discussions in the rooms where power is wielded. Bayo Adelaja | Chief Do-er at Do it Now Now | This is how I got here
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 If we keep going at the pace and in the way we have been, we won’t meet the sustainable Development Goals until 2094. With that in mind we have joined a global movement called Catalyst 2030 to galvanise the collaboration and infrastructure that is necessary among social innovators worldwide to reach the Goals by 2030 as intended. We’re proud to be a Founding Member of this fantastic organization that was launched in Davos with the active support of the leading social innovation organisations in the world; Echoing Green, Ashoka, Schwab Foundation and Skoll Foundation. I was given the opportunity to present the introduction of the Catalyst 2030 movement at the 2020 Skoll Forum alongside two other Founding Members; Kristine Pearson, founder of Lifeline Energy and Colin McElwee, co-Founder of Worldreader. Our global membership group spent months deep diving into the methodology that would support widespread collaboration within the cohort and to ensure the sustainability of this volunteer movement. In February, the founding members met in Northampton (UK), hosted by Spencer family in their stately home, Althrop, and there we decided on engaging members in working groups. The majority of our members utilise the connections made within the network to further their own work and find new qualified partners for their endeavours, while also engaging in the organisation and development of one of the following aspects of our work. WG1 - Governance - as you can imagine, this working group is focused on ensuring we are effectively working together to meet our collective goal as a movement. WG2 - Communication - in this working group, we ensure that the Catalyst movement is effectively portrayed at all times, and devise methods to ensure more people get to know about the work we are doing. WG3 - Collaboration - this working group is at the core of the Catalyst movement. Through the use of technology and other key components, members are given the opportunity to effectively communicate their needs, offer support and gain new insights to help them catalyse their own individual work. WG4 - Impact measuring and visibility - for those of us that are passionate about impact measurement, the democratisation of impact information, usability of that data and transparency within the social sector, working group 4, impact measuring and visibility has been a great opportunity to explore ideas and methodologies with like minded people. WG5 - Financing - this group’s mission is to catalyse the development of powerful systemic change to the financing infrastructure that supports social entrepreneurs. It’s all about embracing complexity from the funder side of things. WG6 - Country and UN interactions - to ensure that we achieve the SDGs we have to work more effectively with governments and the UN. The aim of this group is to create an ecosystem in which all governments, UN & multilateral funding bodies recognise, respect & enable social entrepreneurs/social innovators to take action to implement solutions in their nations and organisations WG7 - Private sector interactions - their aim is to represent the rest of the world that engages with the ecosystem in which we all operate. They work to engage and mobilise corporations, communities, civil society, and young people as catalysts to bring about systemic change. WG8 - Convergence - in this working group, members are focused on designing the architecture for a systems highway that will allow us to share data and information easily to help build capacity for non-profits. The Secretariat offers varying levels of support. In some initiatives it is a guiding force, whereas in others it is hands on. Its role is to coordinate, support and facilitate engagements, projects and opportunities with Catalyst 2030 members and working group members. As we worked to develop the governance structure of Catalyst 2030 it was important to us that this volunteer run organisation adopted a bottom up approach and that is reflected in the modality of the Secretariat which acts primarily as a Backbone structure, the core of that backbone being One Family Foundation, led by Catalyst 2030 founder, Jeroo Billimoria. We have 10 years to achieve the goals. So over the next decade we are going to have to evolve our approach to meet the challenges that arise and to continue catalysing the impact of the status quo at the time. Right now, we’re in the Preparation phase. We’re building the movement’s foundation, performing scoping activities and determining what our key actions are to be. In the Incubation phase, over an 18 month period, working groups will initiate pilot programs that will foster learning, and produce effective iterations. In the Expansion phase, we’ll spend these 4 years scaling the proven models developed within our working groups, with the scope of the projects reaching across geographies and sectors. In the five years following, what we have named the Maturity phase, we’ll further scale our interventions. By this time, we intend to have created new structures, policies, practices, and norms that can be embraced by system actors. We know that we’ll have to be adaptable and that, as we are currently experiencing, focus can shift and change. Thankfully, the model itself, from the start, was built to absorb shifts and changes well. I’m excited about how well all of this has come together in such a short space of time, and how well we are collaborating and developing across our working groups, as an entire body. Catalyst 2030 is made up of many fantastic organisations around the world that have decided to work together and make a concerted unified effort towards the meeting of the SDGs in 2030. Surely if the entire world can change in a matter of weeks, as it recently has, the entire world can change again for the better, and faster through efforts such as these. If you would like to find out more about what we’re building, head over to the Catalyst 2030 website for frequent updates on our activities. Bayo Adelaja | Chief Do-er at Do it Now Now | This is how I got here |
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