Running a mile, “helping with belt tightening”: just one of the ways Multi-Cultural Family Base staff are raising cash to support vital services. See Cut or Run: how to survive the age of austerity?
Meet Mridu Thanki, a moving force behind the World Kitchen in Leith who believes sharing food is the best way to bring people from different cultures together.
Introducing PC Simon Daley who opens our new series on community. Click here to see a refreshing view of young people – and the police too.
Who are Local Heroes?
There are no ordinary people. This section of the website is to celebrate the successes local people achieve in their day to day lives.
The inspiration comes from Donat (second from the right in the picture below), a volunteer at the former Scottish Council for Minorities based in Iona Street, Leith.
During the second Leith Open Space event in May 2006 people talked about obstacles to employment and voluntary work. Donat suggested it was time we all celebrated the successes of ethnic minority groups.
We look forward to telling the stories of local people and what they are achieving in many different aspects of life in the community of Leith.
INTRODUCING ‘OPENING DOORS’ PARTICIPANTS:
Celina Mbwiria
I recognised an opportunity to explore how politics works at the grassroot level and I also saw a chance for me to raise awareness about issues that affect me and other people like me.
I am a medical doctor with qualifications from an African country and as such, I have experienced great difficulties in trying to establish my career in Scotland. Being a lone parent, with two children to care for and very little money to do it with, has contributed to the barriers I have faced in this respect. However, I have strived to enhance my situation by getting involved in a variety of initiatives aimed at improving my employability potential. Such initiatives have included participation in a postgraduate programme from which I graduated with an MSc degree in Health Promotion and Health Education from the University of Edinburgh.
While looking around for what to do next to enhance my situation, I came across information promoting the ‘Getting Your Voices Heard (GYVH)’ project, a year long programme supported by the City of Edinburgh Council and facilitated through the Centre for Human Ecology. The project brought together representatives from statutory agencies (Police, NHS, City of Ediburgh Council), ethnic minority voluntary sector and ordinary members of BME communities. The aim was to explore ways of encouraging BME communities to become actively involved in issues around the communities they lived in order to influence decisions that are made about them. In this, I saw a chance for me to articulate the difficulties I was experiencing and needless to say I applied and was accepted into the programme.
Because of my background, I am acutely aware of the existing ineqaulities in health across different sectors of Scottish society. For instance, it is well known that BME communities experience higher levels of disadvantage and marginalisation. What is not effectively recognised however, is the great diversity that exists within the BME communities and that some communities are barely visible to services planning and delivery. From such knowledge and coming from one of the most marginalised communities, I have developed an interest in understanding the political processes, in how government policies are generated and policies translated into services planning and deliverly.
While I was participating in the GYVH programme, I was informed about the ‘Opening Doors’ project. I recognised an opportunity to explore how politics works at the grassroot level and I also saw a chance for me to raise awareness about issues that affect me and other people like me. I applied and was accepted into the programme. The councillor I was asigned to was a very good choice as I found him to be full of energy, very knowledgeable about local issues, articulate and very easy to talk to. Since then my mentor and I have attended a meeting hosted by ‘Greener Leith’ about a community garden at the Leith Links which I found interesting and the next point of call was the city chambers as described here.