International Women’s Day – we celebrate inspirational women!

Safia, recently awarded an MBE, is founder of Women’s Inclusive Team (WIT), an organisation we’ve funded since 2020. WIT strives to ensure Black and ethnic minority women in Tower Hamlets live fulfilled, safe and happy lives. We spoke to her about why she set up WIT, how the cost of living crisis is impacting women and who inspires her. 

‘I think for me, it’s a selfish story to an extent. I grew up in Tower Hamlets, saw barriers and my way of solving problems and challenges was to do something about it. So other girls, like my daughter,  wouldn’t have the same challenges. I faced exclusion, both internally within the community and wider society. I wasn’t allowed to go to a youth club. I wasn’t allowed to go on residential trips. So I understand the concerns and the barriers that come culturally and the need to mitigate them. 

I was one of the few Somali families living in Tower Hamlets before the 1990s.  My siblings and I were the only Somalis in our local primary school. Then in the 1990s a lot more moved into the area and at school, there were now two other Somali girls in class with me! It felt like suddenly, for the first time, we embraced our Somali culture. 

But Somalis have been here in the borough for over 100 years. At family and community gatherings men would tell you stories of how they fought in WWI and show their medals – it was remarkable to listen to those stories and experience such an amazing childhood.

But obviously, within that, there were inequalities between boys and girls. For instance, I don’t know how to ride a cycle. Although this year my plan is to learn! But the reason I don’t know is because culturally girls were not allowed to cycle – only the boys were. But these restrictions on girls activities always came from an place of “I want to protect my daughter”.

As I was growing up, there was no organizations that understood the needs of ethnic minority women that looked like me.  So, 20 years ago, I was part of a group of women who set up Women’s Inclusive Team. We wanted an organisation that reassured the community: a safe environment we could trust, but where daughters could have the same experiences as her peers. 

A priority was to make sure ethnic minority families had the best start, and early years development was central to that. At the time, SureStart was being rolled out, so we got involved with this. Then we created a youth club because if families knew their daughters were in a safe environment, they would obviously send them.  So these were our first two projects. 

I had a ‘penny-drop’ moment when I realised the women bringing their children to these projects also needed to be developed and supported. At that time, there was a parallel world where ethnic minority women had their school rounds and mixed with themselves but weren’t part of the wider activity in the borough. So we organised workshops to explain what services were available in the borough. When you hear about a local service from someone who looks like me, who is saying “I’ll translate for you so you can ask all the questions”, that’s how you make change. 

So at WIT, every service that we’ve designed – from mental health projects to the food we provide – is about responding to and reflecting the specific needs of ethnic minority women. 

There is still lots of work to break down barriers that stop Somali women from accessing services. For example, during COVID we looked at data that showed only one woman of Somali origin had accessed mainstream domestic violence services. So we ran a one-year pilot project and 64 women used it. Women weren’t necessarily unhappy in their marriage, but they did not know that what they were experiencing was domestic abuse – such as financial-control and coercion – or what services were available to them. 

As one of the Commissioners involved in the Borough’s Race Commission, my goal was to make sure that mainstream services reflect the community, and that the community sees the services as a valuable asset. That takes a whole system understanding cultural nuance. 

IMPACT OF THE COST OF LIVING CRISIS

Most of the women we support have large numbers of children, often from single mother households. As well as dealing with the challenge of trying to survive here, these women are needing to support a whole family back home, because there is no social benefits there. So women have to cut out a huge chunk of their income for this, while they’re also desperately trying to meet their children’s needs . One mum said to me “I don’t know what to do. My son wants trainers. If I don’t get them, I’m worried about people recruiting young people to sell drugs and that he might get involved.” Now, when we do the priority debts assessment with mothers, trainers are obviously not a part of that, but for her, “my son being content and having his needs” is the difference between him potentially being drawn into drug dealing. 

It’s a super, super hard position, emotionally and psychologically, and we’ve seen a huge increase in mental health issues. Luckily we have a clinical nurse in the organization and a community connector who support us. Also, we’ve got a beautiful asset in the borough, Angela Burns, who’s a psychologist. She talks about how therapy is not always about one- to-one. Therapy can take place in a social setting. So we try and facilitate that environment, whether it’s while women are in a kitchen cooking for people in need, or part of a sewing circle. 

If we talk about challenges for WIT it is actually that women’s organisations that look like us often don’t get funding. That’s makes it even harder for us to support women. But having that safe environment, where you are able to say ‘I need help’ is so important. 

It took so much hard work and sweat and sleepless nights and stress to build the organization to where it is now – embedded in the community by the community, for the community. So it becomes an asset that’s owned by the community. It’s women solving their own problems and not waiting for others to do that. That’s because it has been built up by people running the organisation who have that same lived experience, who understand the layers of cultural elements, different dynamics and nuances. We make sure that stakeholders are held to account, that the voice of the women is heard, that women hear the voice of external organisations. So we’re bridging gaps.

INSPIRATION

My mother is my inspiration. She has helped me so much. When I was starting off, working such long hours with five kids, she used to look after them. She is a full-time carer of my dad, who is disabled, but she never said “what are you doing? Don’t leave the kids with me.” 

And what was so beautiful, whenever I explained something to her, even though she wasn’t brought up like that, she understood. And even though she’s an older woman now, she still understands. She’ll sit with my daughter and her many piercings (she is obsessed with piercings!) and embraces her and never comments on it. So she’s a woman of faith and culture and also very modern in her own way. Whenever refugees came, she would always open her door, feed them, and she would help them establish themselves. She says “when you give, you get back. And I got back amazing kids”.’