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Meena Bharadwa, manager, at the Ashiana project in Birmingham, says that regeneration sometimes focuses on policy debates and not enough on people.
However, this is certainly not a problem the Ashiana Project has. Bharadwa says: “It’s about what happens on the ground. We don’t think about policy too much. We deliver what’s needed.”
Over the last few years whilst the government has been busy debating the definition of cohesion and whether it should be funding groups with single ethnic identities, Ashiana have just been getting on with community life.
Bharadwa says: “People don’t come together because they’re Indian, Pakistani or Arabic. They do because they’ve got something that they need to tackle together. That’s what the term ‘habits of solidarity’ is about.”
The Ashiana project’s Engagement Mentors programme, funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust is one such example. The programme encourages marginalised local women from across the local communities to participate in health, education and confidence-building programmes.
“In our project women come together because they want to build their confidence, not because they are Pakistani, Indian or Irish,” says Bharadwa. “But coming together acts as a trigger for them to interact. It is a slow, organic process and that’s how relationships form. When you put pressure on that to happen, it doesn’t work.”
The Ashiana project was started in 1998 by a number of local residents, as a general advice centre but grew into a job service, a nursery, a women’s project and a drugs scheme now staffed by around 18 people. The engagement mentors programme has been running for three years as an offshoot of the women’s project, Sparkbrook Women Together.
The mentors programme brings together women from different communities and helps them forge close bonds as they overcome their mutual concerns together. By doing this the project fosters cohesion but also helps address poverty and inequality.
Funding the Engagement Mentors scheme with £30,000 from the Barrow Cadbury Trust over the last year has enabled Ashiana to offer its volunteers on the scheme a chance to gain accredited qualifications from the credit-based awarding body in the UK, the National Open College Network (NOCN).
This has allowed 12 volunteers to receive accredited qualifications in mentoring practices on various levels. They have then gone on to jobs in nurseries, schools and playgroups or further education.
Shakila Bi, the Development Worker who runs the Engagement Mentors project, says: “Engagement mentors are women from different backgrounds and they bring in clients from different backgrounds too. They do not necessarily have to bring in Arabic clients if they are Arabic, for instance. As a result we get lots of clients from different backgrounds in the same room.”
The mentors provide information to the community about Ashiana’s services but also other local services. Currently, 23 registered unpaid volunteers are part of the mentoring team.
Jamilia Al-Qahtani, an engagement mentor, says: “We can approach people by going into schools, on the street, in homes.”
Bharadwa adds that aside from the funding, the Barrow Cadbury Trust has also “been able to open doors for us”.
“When you’re concentrating on delivering, you don’t think about going out and promoting your project. That’s where the Trust has been really supportive..”
