We have four new black and minority ethnic women councillors since the last election – thanks to a ground breaking and much-needed mentoring scheme.

Less than 1% of women councillors come from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds despite making up 5% of the population!

So Operation Black Vote and the Government Equalities Office launched a task-force to tackle this under-representation. To lack BAME women means we are losing out, on not only representation itself, but talented and able women who may just never have thought someone like them could go into politics.

If you have never seen role models that look like you in politics; if you have never stood up and spoken in front of a group of other people; if you don’t know that much about how politics works – be that council or parliament – then it’s a huge and unlikely step for you to take. There are other barriers too. The cost – if you are a low earner. Cultural barriers – if your culture doesn’t encourage women to participate in politics and so on.

So the task-force sent ambassadors around the country speaking to groups of BAME women. From that around 125 came forward and of those 60 took part in the mentoring scheme and a further 25 in a skills based project SOLACE.

Eight of the women on the mentoring scheme stood to become councillors in the May 6th local elections just passed and four of those have been elected as councillors.

Congratulations to all of them! I look forward to meeting them later today at the graduation ceremony.

It’s that first step that is so vital. I remember myself (not black but female) and not coming from the sort of background where anyone even thought of politics. But I did a shadowing scheme myself shadowing one of our MPs and it was during that period that I first got elected as a councillor to Haringey Council.

It gave me the confidence to go from ‘I couldn’t possibly, not someone like me’ to ‘actually I can’!