By Shipa Ahmed Khan, head of the Portsmouth Cross-Cultural Women’s Group (CCWG)

My name is Shipa Ahmed Khan, I work for the local authority and have over 20 years, experience of working with marginalised communities. As part of my role, I run the Cross-Cultural Women's Group (CCWG).

The CCWG is a weekly drop-in group for women with a particular focus on encouraging women from Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic communities (BAME) to be involved and engage with the wider community. Prior to lockdown, we have had approximately 15-20 women attending each week.

The group is open to all women and offers support to women who may be experiencing poor mental health, domestic violence, women who may be carers and those experiencing social isolation.

The group gives Women the opportunity to learn, we offer English classes and various talks on health and other topics. Many of the Women attending would not have accessed any formal learning in the past, many have never been to school or were not allowed to go to school.

So, as you can imagine with a diverse group of women from various different countries, with different levels of English language ability. We could say that there is a language barrier, however we manage to overcome these barriers or challenges because we are Women. Women who support each other and empower each other to better ourselves. The Women are the group and the way we respect and support one another creates an atmosphere where all Women are made to feel valued.

We signpost and link women with other local support services, to ensure they are getting their needs met.

When I advertise this group, I am mindful to put the focus on the CCWG being an English language class and social group offering workshops around wellbeing. But actually, behind the scenes we do so much more and support women who are going through various difficulties in their lives.

Above all we offer a 'safe space' for women to talk and get the right support. Over the years we have supported and empowered many women to break away from the problems they are facing. Working at the grass roots level, we are often the first support that Women will access.

We were grateful to be given the opportunity to work with FiLiA to deliver some local projects for Women. With FiLiA's involvement and links we could really engage and deliver work that would be meaningful to and help to empower the women that we support.

It was important to me that these projects didn't just work with the CCWG so we opened the projects to other local women's groups in the city and Individual Women who wanted to be involved. This enabled both myself and FiLiA to outreach to groups that would not normally engage with services.

Out of this, we have set up a Women's book club, where we meet the author. The authors reflected diversity and focused on relevant topics. Often topics that are not spoken about openly, but always telling stories of women who have been through adversity and become stronger because of it. 

Various courses around leadership, consciousness-raising, finding my voice, Domestic violence, sexual exploitation to name a few.

As part of the FiLiA Legacy Project, we wanted to do a project that celebrates women from different ethnic groups. Also, to have a project that would be inclusive of women who couldn’t access the other workshops due to language barriers.

The women wanted to put together their own cookbook with recipes that were significant to them, something important from their culture or family. We have around 40 recipes from women from diverse cultures. The cultural cookbook isn't quite finished as there were significant delays running the project due to the pandemic. We hope the cultural cookbook will be ready in a few weeks-time. We will of course let Women know when it I ready through the FiLiA network.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lisa-Marie and the whole FiLiA team who have really supported the CCWG and local Women. I know that the Women would want me to thank you on their behalf as well. The FiLiA legacy projects have really empowered women and given women an opportunity to learn and be involved. I can’t stress enough how much the FiLiA legacy projects have benefited individual women in Portsmouth. I believe it will leave a lasting memory of projects they were involved in and will continue to give women confidence to be more involved in the community.

THANK YOU!