ABOUT STR!VE

Contact Consultants:
Rumena Choudhury rumenac@hotmail.com or Sumaiya Mulla sumaiya_mulla@hotmail.com

STR!VE is an organisation aimed to help encourage women to speak up about issues affecting them. Our aim is to heighten awareness and understanding of the diversity of women within the community, with an emphasis on developing cohesive leadership rooted in the ethos of knowledge, confidence and teamwork. This will provide women with the opportunities to enable them to actively participate in and contribute to our diverse society and promote women as positive role models in our society.

We as consultants feel that we could achieve this through a variety of ways. Some of which are to set up new and innovative schemes and others are to work in partnership to ensure that existing services and provisions are utilised so that the wheel is not reinvented. This is important because the rush is often on creating a ‘new’ service when in fact something local already exists but is either not publicized well enough or robust evaluation to assess success has not been carried out.

EMPOWERMENT PROJECT

We have won some funding from Leicester City Council’s Mainstream Moderation Programme. Our first project focuses on working with Muslim women on an empowerment project. STR!VE will be doing this in association with St Philips Centre “which is a national ecumenical training centre under the Presence and Engagement initiative.” The government have identified Muslim women as a target audience that needs to be worked with in order to help counter the threat of violent extremism. The Communities and Local government report “Preventing Violent Extremism-Winning Hearts and Minds” identifies that women’s voices are one of the least heard and that they need more forums to encourage them to speak out.

The report lists as one of its immediate priorities the need to: “Strengthen the role that women can play within their communities. Women can play a vital role in building strong communities and tackling violent extremism.” Furthermore, A Government Equalities Office report “Women’s Changing Lives Priorities for the Ministers for Women One Year on Progress Report”

states that: “There are at least 800,000 Muslim women living in Britain today and strengthening their role is critical to building strong and cohesive communities.”

In order to do this we will be running an empowerment course where we will encourage women to sign up and learn skills to encourage them to speak up on issues that affect them in their communities and societies. One of the end products we hope to create is the establishment of a women’s network. This will act as a support matrix for the women to consult on when an issue arises and to help promote new and up and coming positive role models for their communities.

1. In order to do this we will run presentations and projects where we would invite key women who are in positions of influence and who are from different professions and walks of life such as teachers, clergy, activists, academics and women involved in various NGOs etc to talk and help empower other women to encourage them that they can make a difference. This will provide an opportunity for Muslim women to engage and network with female community leaders and other members. We also hope to include a practical element to the course which will allow the women to use the skills learnt on a project to enhance confidence, team-working and as an example to show that they can make a difference.

We are particularly keen on working with women who may not see themselves as ‘leaders’ but want to be heard. There is also the need to encourage the up and coming Muslim women to enhance their leadership skills and also increase the participation of Muslim women who are not usually seen in the media or in public; we believe this can be achieved in the heart of our multicultural Leicester as being the appropriate setting by building alliances and creating new partnerships. We would use existing facilities in the community for projects so that they are easily accessible. Furthermore, we hope to expand on existing projects that would benefit from new members such as Christian-Muslim women’s dialogue group etc.

In order to achieve our aims we will be working with experienced practitioners in the field through our existing contacts such as St Philips Centre, Islamic Foundation in Markfield, Lord Mayor Manjula Sood, various government departments and contacts to deliver projects. We have already recruited women from a wide range of cultural Muslim communities including Bengali, Gujarati and Pakistani; we also have Shi’a and Sunni Muslims, who are willing to volunteer their time and expertise. We are still recruiting more women through word of mouth advertising and going into places where Muslim women frequent.

The outcomes we hope to achieve are getting more Muslim women in key decision making roles. Additionally, we hope to create future leaders and ambassadors to represent their communities and the issues affecting them by equipping them with the skills and tools necessary to achieve this. We would like to foresee more and more Muslim women to play an active and leading role in their communities.

Moreover, we would like women to gain more knowledge about their rights and the self confidence and belief that they can make a difference. We would like the women to take back their skills and knowledge to educate others and be a voice for others.

Our aims and objectivities are backed by local and national evidence showing that we need more female participation for instance Riaz Ravat’s report “Embracing The Present Planning The Future” recommends: “Supporting more female participation. (adding to this) Faith communities should adopt structures and working practices which encourage greater female involvement particularly at organisation/ committee level.”

2. A Government Equalities Office report “Women’s Changing Lives Priorities for the Ministers for Women One Year on Progress Report” states that:

“Some Muslim women do not have the confidence or skills to speak up in their communities. Others face practical barriers, such as balancing family life with other roles. And wider public debates often reverts to stereotypes and preconceptions. However, the evidence is that Muslim women want to get into the work place and also have a voice in shaping their communities.”

We feel that there is a need for this project as we as Muslim women ourselves growing up and volunteering our time on community issues felt that there was a lack of role models and Muslim women community leaders to address women’s issues. Thus, we have identified a need to engage Muslim women in key decision making roles especially on issues affecting them to empower themselves and others. This is why we ourselves have become community activists for women by volunteering our time through our adult lives through organising European conferences, working with the BBC, various interfaith activities and training to be mentors to help the youth in our communities. We have also done our own research and fact-finding missions, for example working with the police on issues affecting Muslim women and identifying how best to serve them and dispelling myths surrounding them. We feel that we would be the right people to deliver the project as we ourselves have come from traditional Muslim backgrounds and from the Highfields community one of the deprived areas of Leicester and can relate to the need for it.

As Muslim women we recognise the need to promote the message that we share the same values, principles and ideals as the wider society. Therefore, we recognise the need of initiatives that empower Muslim women which will help identify emerging leadership and lead to better relations with society as a whole through constructive processes of engagement at local and national levels.

An exhibition on the Str!ve project took place at St Philip’s Church Community Hall on Tuesday 8th June - see the News Page for further information.        Strive report available here:  course-report-strive