Ripples Story: “A Voice of Support”

In this article, Zulekha Dala JP MBE, Chief Officer of Aawaz, describes how her charity has strengthened local social cohesion for nearly three decades by consistently addressing community needs.

Aawaz is a charity based in Hyndburn, Lancs. It was established as a small community group in 1997 by a group of Muslim women. The aim was to help mothers who did not speak sufficient English and needed language support to access mainstream services.

The word Aawaz means “Voice” in Urdu. The group has since become a women’s charity offering multilingual support, personal development, and learning/training opportunities for women from minoritised communities. It is about working with women from a person-centred approach to help the individual contribute to wider society.

We do this very practically with our small team of multilingual staff and our wonderful volunteers. Engaging meaningfully with the women helps them to feel comfortable and able to discuss what they wish in a warm, friendly, and welcoming environment. We work holistically and at the grassroots; this means we can engage with individuals often described as disconnected or difficult to reach. We are out there doing outreach, face-to-face work, talking with women and listening to what they have to say. Aawaz is always listening and hearing about the issues that impact the women who access the charity’s support.

From our experience delivering support over the past 28 years, we have learned that the simplest things are the best for helping bring communities together. Be genuine, give your time, be respectful, actively listen, be patient, and be realistic about what we can help to change! Our approach is always about being open and honest, welcoming, helping people feel at ease, and allowing them to ask questions without worrying about offending anyone. It is essential for us that we are here for the women who need our support before and after a project begins. Our door is open!

Aawaz has always sought out new opportunities for service users. We have initiated and nurtured connections and built good working relationships that assist everyone in working effectively across cultures. This work creates its own role models: women who approach Aawaz who receive the help and support that enables them to become helpers to others. They go on to achieve their goals, which can include being more confident, communicating better in the English language, taking up a new hobby, learning a new skill, volunteering, further education, or employment.

Multi-faith working is a cross-cutting theme in all our activities because developing a better understanding between cultures is essential. We have found that opening up simple conversations helps everyone, and there are often more similarities than stark differences.

Voices of Unity

We’re working on a cohesion project, ‘Unity Voices’, owned and steered by a group of women passionate about creating better understanding between cultures. The whole country was shocked by the tragic incident in Southport during the summer of 2024. What was also shocking was the rapid onset of protests and violence towards the Muslim community. At Aawaz, our service users were so anxious and threatened that we had to decide to pause all face-to-face work.

In this time of division and fear, many in minoritised communities felt, and still feel, anxious and concerned. Thus, it became even more critical that we continue working to unite communities and people from different cultures and backgrounds, keeping the conversations open and ongoing through informal networks. The Unity Voices project has provided the opportunity to train a group of Cohesion Ambassadors.

Another aspect of the project is creative writing, which led to a female multilingual choir writing their own songs in English, Urdu, Arabic, Gujarati, Farsi and Bengali. Initially, the project planned to arrange visits to different agencies and groups to meet and greet. However, during the steering group sessions, the ladies decided it would be more powerful to go out and speak with ordinary residents, approaching them in a friendly manner and opening up simple conversations. They talked about general things about their locality and found out the similarities. Some of the feedback from the conversations has included:

• “It’s been good talking to you. I have not had a chat with a woman in a headscarf like yours before; you are alright.”
• “Thanks for talking with us. We learned something today.”
• “I didn’t think that Muslim women speak up like you do.”

We are planning a Cohesion Morning to hear from the women participating in the various activities and how they believe they have helped bring communities together.

Actions show you care

We live and work in a diverse society, and it is important to have mutual respect. My experience of community cohesion started in my home life. I can remember that, as a young girl, my mother used to bake pies and send us across to our elderly neighbours, a frail gentleman living alone and a few doors away, and two older ladies who shared a house. We took it for granted that we all helped, talked to each other, asked each other questions about things that we noticed were different and tried to understand each other better. And all that with my mother not speaking much English! What was most apparent was her genuine nature in getting to know her neighbours and her appreciation of our cultures’ differences and similarities. Through her actions, she showed that she cared.

Equally, my father, who was a very educated man, used to help several neighbours and friends who did not speak English very well. They often needed help with filling out forms, reading letters, or contacting agencies. He would read and explain things in a calm and gentle manner with great respect. He always explained that we must respect our rights and fulfil our responsibilities.

I hope that sharing my experience at Aawaz has demonstrated how a consistent, enduring approach to engaging with a local community to help address their needs can, in turn, contribute to successful local social cohesion over a nearly thirty-year period. The issues evolve and develop, but our success stories encourage us to persevere even during the toughest times.

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