Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Micheal Matovu, commercial director of Radiant and Brighter.
Presiding Officer and members, thank you for the opportunity to address you this afternoon.
My wife and I founded Radiant and Brighter community interest company in 2012. That year, a young woman who had graduated with a master’s degree but who could not find a job came to us to seek support. She wanted to start a business but had come to a dead end with that, too. We shared our own experience and what we knew, and a year later, she launched a natural skin care product business.
In 2016, an organisation that was seeking to diversify its workforce came to us. We developed a programme that brought together more than 90 candidates and 25 senior managers. At the end of it, people who previously had not been able to find work were working within months. On the other hand, the managers had learned about diversity and the gaps in their systems.
Like the young woman in the first story and the people in the second, my family and I had our own challenges. We moved to Scotland 15 years ago with two toddlers and a baby on the way. For five years we were not able to work due to our immigration status. When we were finally granted leave to remain in 2012, we could not find work because, being black migrants, we were different.
The purpose of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly, was to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination. The first major international human rights law, which was adopted in 1965 and ratified by 176 states, was the result of that declaration. Yet racism remains, and human rights are sometimes so far removed from their foundation.
The Bible says that we are all “fearfully and wonderfully made” and that we are created in God’s image. None of us has the same fingerprint, yet all of us bleed the same.
Difference often leads to innovation and solutions to many world problems. Why, then, do we focus on what divides us when we could focus on what binds us? Why do we hate when we could love? Why do we hurt when we could heal? Why do we create hopelessness when we could create hope?
We are all bound by our humanity, and each of us has been created with greatness within us. Could we use our greatness better, or perhaps more often? Could we use it to transform and enhance one another’s lives? Could we celebrate one another more and be more loving, kinder and more united?
Be great. Be different. Choose love.