Fire Kills Awarded

The BME Fire Kills campaign was one of the winners at the Civil Service Diversity & Equality Awards, held on Tuesday 2nd December 2008 in Birmingham. The award, in the Engagement and Involvement category, recognises the effective working partnerships that the campaign has fostered, both with Black Minority Ethnic groups and the Fire and Rescue Services. Fire Kills beat hundreds of other applicants to a highly coveted place alongside six other category winners, all congratulated on their commitment towards Civil Service equality and diversity.

Research commissioned by the Fire Kills campaign showed that the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Somali and, increasingly, Polish communities were potentially at higher risk from fire but had the lowest level of awareness of the risks. These groups were not necessarily exposed to the main Fire Kills campaign through mainstream advertising and media, and typically had no cultural history of viewing fire safety measures as important, or as their responsibility.

Sarbjit Suri, Fire Kills BME Campaign manager, said “The BME campaign is an exemplar of how to extend mainstream marketing and engagement activity into disenfranchised and diverse audience groups, through the creation of audience-specific communications and improved cultural understanding.”

The Fire Kills Team also recently received an important award from the Asian Fire Service Association (AFSA) for the BME Fire Kills Campaign. The AFSA award is testimony to the impact the BME Fire Kills Campaign has had at the local level and how it has strongly supported Fire and Rescue Service engagement with Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Somali communities.