The Human Rights and Equality Committee (HREC) were pleased to attend Mela Day at Botanic Gardens on 30 August.
Mela Day is one of Northern Ireland’s most vibrant cultural festivals, bringing people together from a wide range of backgrounds through music, food, arts and culture. It provides an important shared and inclusive space for communities to celebrate and express their cultural identities.
For the Committee, participating in Mela Day was an important opportunity to engage directly with diverse communities, celebrate cultural diversity and demonstrate our commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion.
Our attendance at Mela also supports our ambitions under the Society’s Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Strategy and wider strategic priorities to help build a diverse and inclusive profession that reflects the communities that solicitors serve.
Throughout the day, colleagues and members of the Society spoke with members of the public, answered questions and provided information about the solicitor profession and its work. We also shared information on how to become a solicitor, along with consumer guides on practical legal issues such as buying a house and making a will.
We hope our stall helped people understand when legal advice may be relevant in their lives, and highlighted the role solicitors play in supporting individuals, families, and businesses within our community.
Mela also provided an opportunity to highlight the role solicitors play in helping people understand and exercise their rights, as well as the importance of access to justice for all. Engaging with different communities helped us better understand the barriers people may face when accessing legal services and justice, and how these can be best overcome.
We look forward to continuing our work promoting diversity, equality and inclusion within the profession and wider society in future.
