Addressing the impacts of air pollution: It all starts with awareness

Air pollution is the most significant problem no one really knows about, well not in my community anyway. Speaking to communities whose ancestors weren’t born in the UK and do not identify as British, air pollution is a problem that very few of us are even aware of. So how can we deal with a problem that is not on our minds? Our answer: we need to create awareness as the first step.

We’ve set-up an Air Pollution Forum to capture the voices of the community and to create more awareness on how air pollution affects them. We want to find out what their opinions are, so we can work with them to form community-driven solutions. As a group, we are part of and represent people from all different backgrounds and, through our forum, we have created a platform where we can really be heard. I have not used the acronym ‘BAME,’ as it is a term that homogenises such a diverse group of people. People who have vastly different cultures and lived experiences that we cannot even begin to appreciate by collectively referring to them using one term.

In this week's forum meeting, we split up into three groups to discuss three key questions inspired by the feedback we had following our first session. I facilitated one of these discussions with Marcus, a fellow community researcher. We posed the question ‘What would a community-led group look like to you?’ In essence, we wanted to find out what makes an organisation truly community-led? How would it operate? What activities would it organise? How would it engage with the community?

Overwhelmingly, awareness of the issue as a whole and how it affects the community was the main point that our participants raised. We heard it again and again, awareness is the first step.

It is one of the reasons we created this forum, to let our communities know why it is important for them to get involved. We want the community to not only be part of creating the solutions to the problem of air pollution but also across all the issues they are facing.

The next step was then how? How do we create this awareness? What are the physical actions we can take to reach out to these communities?

Word of mouth has always been one of the most effective ways to get your message across, and the Air Pollution Forum considers it vital for sharing this agenda. A form of communication that can be often overlooked nowadays, could be the answer to making people from our communities rise up and become passionate about the issues that affect them every single day.  Approaching people at their regular supermarket, place of worship, community centres; anywhere and everywhere people congregate. Taking the time out to speak to just one person and make an impact on their way of thinking. Who would you rather listen to, a faceless advert on Instagram, or a close friend expressing themselves on an issue they want you to be a part of? That’s what I thought.

My expectation going into the forum meeting was to come out with a really well-defined picture of what this ‘community-led’ organisation looks like and the different activities it would be involved in. These were some of the burning questions I’ve been struggling to answer. Which equally made us wonder, why is this conversation only taking place now? In 2020, the year of the global pandemic, where the world has been turned upside down and where one speech from the Prime Minister can change your reality from one week to the next. I found I started to have more questions than answers, which shows how vital these forum discussions are because no one person has all the answers.

When the voices in the air pollution forum speak, sometimes it’s the simplest comments or ideas that really get my mind going, and I sit there thinking why can’t I answer that?

But doesn’t that show the importance of having these community members being part of the discussion? We believe it does matter, which is why we will continue to facilitate these discussions and make this change. First, we will get people talking about the issue, and then we will decide what we are going to do about it. Actions speak louder than words, don’t you want to be part of the action?

If this blog inspired you or if you just want to find out more from myself or anyone in the team, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We would love you to get involved and I look forward to hearing what you have to say!