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Heritage Empowerment – Sophie’s Story & DWP South Asian Heritage Month

Category: Generation (Age Friendly)

Global Ethnic Majority

Sophie’s Story & DWP South Asian Heritage Month

For Heritage Empowerment Month, one of our senior manager’s Sophie talks about her heritage and how this shapes her approach to inclusion in the workplace.

I come from a very mixed background which has exposed me to lots of different cultures and traditions from a young age. This has helped to shape who I am, the way I see the world, and what I bring to the workplace.

I am mixed race; my mum is Malaysian, and my dad is English. I’m actually the second generation of my family to be mixed race as my mum is too; she’s half Chinese and half Indian. This was very unusual in the 1950s, particularly when arranged marriages were common, and led to some challenges for her growing up which she didn’t want me to experience.  

I grew in a family where my grandfather was Hindu, my grandma was Buddhist, my mum went to a catholic school and was Christian, and my uncle married a Muslim and converted. At one point we had four different religions and cultural traditions in my family, which meant I would celebrate Eid, Diwali, Christmas, and Chinese New Year!

There were also lots of different languages spoken in my grandma’s house in Malaysia…it wasn’t uncommon for a sentence to start in Cantonese, switch to English and finish in Malay! Unfortunately for me I could only understand the bits in English…

Whilst I am now very proud and comfortable of my mixed and varied background this has not always been the case. Growing up in the UK I was very conscious that I didn’t want to stand out or be different at school. I deliberately wouldn’t talk about my background, would ask my mum to cook western foods if friends came to my house, and would rather die than tell anyone I belonged to my town’s Malaysian Society! I felt like there were two sides to me; the western part, which I displayed outwardly to fit in, and the Asian part. It also wasn’t common to see a family like mine portrayed in TV, books or the media at that time, and if a mixed-race family was featured it was rarely in positive a context!  

My attitude changed as I spent more time in Malaysia as an adult. I learnt more about the history, people, food (which is amazing), and the Asian part of myself. I was surrounded by lots of Malaysian people celebrating their culture, and I felt proud of my background and fortunate to have the privilege of belonging to two cultures.

As my multi-cultural family is all I’ve ever known I didn’t always appreciate that I had a set of cultural experiences that many other people did not. I now feel very lucky to have my varied background, and to have experienced such openness and tolerance within my family, and these are values I try to take into the workplace.

I also think it is still very common for people to feel like they want to fit in or that it is risky to stand out and be different, particularly if they are in a minority group (whether that is due to religion, race, sexuality). Because of this, I think it’s important for us to try and create a workplace environment where people do feel comfortable being able to share all parts of their identity, and that we use their valuable cultural knowledge and experience to improve what we do and how we deliver it. I am fortunate that this has been my personal experience of DWP, and I try to actively role model living these values in work myself.

How DWP Celebrates Heritage – South Asian Heritage Month

For a second year running Sikhs in DWP are proud to be working in partnership with DWP National Race Network to celebrate South Asian Heritage Month.

South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM) which runs from 18 July to 17 August exists in order to commemorate, mark and celebrate South Asian history and culture, as well as to better understand the diverse heritage that continues to link the UK and South Asia. It was launched in the House of Commons in July 2019 and is in its third year in the UK with a 2022 theme ‘Journeys of Empire’ which reflects two major anniversaries taking place in 2022:

  • 75th anniversary of the independence of India, Partition, and the creation of East and West Pakistan
  • 50th anniversary of the expulsion of Ugandan Asians by Idi Amin

For SAHM, DWP is holding different events relating to South Asian culture and identity through the celebration of arts, culture and heritage, the commemoration of South Asian history and through education. From book clubs discussing and celebrating South Asian authors, webinars breaking health taboos within South Asian Communities, to a cooking demonstration, there are so many events for our colleagues to choose from. Thank you to our Sikhs in DWP and DWP National Race Networks for their amazing work.

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