The main aim was to provide a drop-in service every week, to: build on resilience; provide women with the support to overcome daily struggles; enable women to become independent and building on community cohesion and friendships with women of different faiths that are in similar situations. There are many cultures within the community that are heavily influenced by stigmas and taboos or even superstition. We provided sessions on understanding of mental health within different faiths to combat these and offer education and support.
Within the community there is a rising refugee/ asylum seekers population, which needed support. Currently, there are vulnerable groups within the Pakistani heritage, south Asians, Europeans that come from a variety of faiths, Islamic, Christian, Jewish and Hindu. They have all been brought together through community activities like small festival celebrations like Winter Fairs, Harvest gatherings and Eid celebrations, Diwali, and Puram; yet also one inspirational woman event. In these settings they have developed and built long term friendships.
Weekly, two-hour drop-in sessions were implemented, and celebration events were organised for religious and festival periods. All of which took place between October and March at the office-based premises, coffee shops and other locations outside of Bury.
We advertised through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and through other organisations like ADAB, the Jinnah Centre, the Polish Centre, the council, local schools, and churches St Georges and St Andrews. The group is now quite large and their religious and community settings allows them to easily access a hundred people via meetings, work or entertainment.
The project has addressed challenges like isolation, mental health, child exploitation, enabling them to speak with other women in similar situations. Raising awareness in different communities, it has enabled women of different faiths to build new long term friendships. The strengths of the community are faith, spiritual and community based. There is a wide social network which uses not only social media platforms but meetings, emails and phone calls. Our Hub enabled social gatherings: coffee mornings, Zumba classes and knit and natter. We have also provided IT training. We offered a safe, youth network that gave aspiration, fun and engaging activities that keep young girls off the street to prevent CSE.
