What To Remember When Organising Meetings.
When planning a meeting or event you need to make sure that you ask yourself a number of questions, to make sure that it is as accessible to as wide a range of people as possible. You may also want to ask on invitations or booking forms what additional support or requirements attendees might have. The questions that you will need to ask so that you can provide support or appropriate food etc are:
- Do you have any specific dietary requirements, e.g. vegetarian, halal, kosher, gluten free?
- Do you have any access requirments, e.g. hearing loop, interpreter, wheelchair access?
- Do you have any religious requirements, e.g. a prayer room, washing facilities etc?
A key issue when arranging meetings that involve catering can be the provision of Halal or vegetarian food depending on the religion of the participants. Often the easiest option is to supply vegetarian food at meetings
When organising events, meetings, etc., where people from a variety of communities, cultures and religions are invited, the following procedures should be adopted:
- Dates of meetings should be checked to ensure that they do not cut across a religious or cultural festival. Shap Calendar of Religious Festivals (020 7898 1494, shap@natsoc.c-of-e.org.uk) should be available in each Council department. Alternatively, this information may be had by contacting the West of Scotland Racial Equality Council, (0141 337 6626), or the Black and Ethnic Minority Communities Partnership Project, (0141 951 6123), or on the One Scotland website
- Meetings held on days which exclude members of a particular community should be avoided, e.g. Friday over lunch period would exclude the Muslim community and Saturday meetings will exclude the orthodox Jewish community. Timing of Sunday meetings should be considered to avoid exclusion of, for example, Christian, Hindu and Sikh worshippers.
- If a civic reception has a Christian content it may be a positive gesture to invite someone from another religion to participate.
- Dietary requirements must be given special consideration;
- The Muslim community will not eat any pork product and will only eat meat which has been ritually slaughtered (Halal). This is readily available from Halal butchers.
- The Jewish community also eats only meat which has been killed by their own religious, trained butchers (Kosher) and will not eat any product of the pig. They will not eat meat and milk together, so, therefore, meat with cheese or any other milk produce is unacceptable. Either can be eaten on its own.
- The Sikh community does not eat beef. While most will accept other meats, some women will not eat meat of any kind. Halal meat is not normally eaten. Their way of slaughter is called Jhatka.
- The Hindu community are mostly vegetarian with many being vegan, although some do eat non-Halal meat except cow.
- The diet of the Chinese community has no religious restrictions, but is custom based.
It must be emphasised that all food must be plated separately, and clearly labelled. Individual serving spoons should also be made available. It is also important to note that cakes, biscuits, etc. must have no animal fat content.
Crèche facilities should also take account of the black and ethnic minority communities. If possible someone from the minority communities should be on hand who will relate to the black and ethnic minority children. For health and safety reasons information on bilingual speakers, with appropriate language skills, should be available for emergencies.
Information on other religious/cultural requirements may be available through the appropriate religious community organisation.
You can get further details by contacting the Policy and Development Officer, Diversity, on 01389 737386.
