Transcript
A recipe for integration
Afghan Association of London, Harrow
Tamana Jhanmal, Project Co-ordinator
We’re going to showcase Afghan food and it’s going to be mainly run in the future events by Afghan women who are facing socio economic disadvantages and multiple barriers towards integration to the wider British community.
The events will carry a message of cultural understanding and provide these women an opportunity to learn leadership skills and increase their confidence so that they will be able to integrate into the wider British society more effectively. This project will also open a window of opportunity for other projects to create a networking platform for Afghan women.
Samia Malik, Community Cohesion and Engagement, Harrow Council
The role of women in integration is incredible, because actually you’re not just integrating for your own selves but you are also integrating on behalf of your children and your families and that mustn’t be underestimated. The role that you play is key to integration.
Karim Shirin, Chair of the Afghan Association of London, Harrow
The woman is a big part of our society work, we have a special woman’s group that is very active as well day by day identifying the woman’s need of socialising with other women, so today’s cooking event is specially designed to integrate Afghan women with other community women so that’s what led them to their future confidence, enhancing their confidence.
We just asked our community members to understand their needs and priorities. So we were thinking to run a survey and we asked Evelyn Oldfield Unit to help us in that, to do it professionally. The Basis Project we are working with for the last 6 months, or more than 6 months now. They are not helping us just with fundraising but all other departments as well, training our management committee, how to control the financial system within their society, how to get people involved and work with the community work, how to train our management committee so that everybody can take part in the community work, especially as we don’t have paid staff, so we are all volunteers.
We especially thank the Basis Project for helping us by achieving this funding and especially thanks to the big lottery awards for also trusting us to run this project. Hopefully we won’t disappoint them and I hope it will make a big difference to our community.
Comments from attendees
I’m so happy, you know, it’s not only Afghans today, other communities as well and I am so happy to be with them and to share things with them, you know, I’m so happy, just really, really useful.
It was nice to learn the curry of Afghan, we are similar to each other, we are from Somalia Ogaden.
I just thought it was fabulous, it just looked so good, it’s got recipes as well apparently so you’ll be able to make these at home.
I finally learned how to cook okra, I love okra but I’ve never cooked it myself so now I know how.
A further interview with Karim Shirin, Chair of the Afghan Association of London, Harrow
