Anisa Bibi – The Women’s Centre, Burnley

I have worked in the community for the past 12 years and wanted to help ladies reach their full potential. I had to leave my job because of ill health and the experiences I had with the Health Service, trying to get information about my condition and trying to get the help I needed when none of the consultants would talk to me about my illness, made me decide to use my knowledge to find out what my rights were. I was happy to try self help but no one would tell me what I needed to do! I struggled through many complaints procedures in order to get the information I needed to manage my condition.

This whole process really stressed me out. I couldn’t dress myself. I couldn’t pull up a zip and when I went down to the hospitals to see where I could get help they weren’t at all helpful. I began to think that if I was having so much trouble as an English speaking professional how much harder must it be for women who had mental health issues, with depression and isolation who just didn’t know where to turn.

I had experience of helping other groups to set up and get funding and I decided what was needed in Burnley was a place for local women to be able to come and talk and seek help. I wanted to five back to the community and use the knowledge I have to benefit others.

We did a local event and asked ladies to complete a questionnaire to see what they would be interested in. Ever since then we have been inundated with requests for things that women need. We were lucky to get small amounts of funding which allows us to provide a service to any woman that walks through our door. I would say that at least 50% of the ladies that use this centre to access services have not accessed services through any other agency. Many of them come to us with poor education, lack of language skills, lack of self esteem and lack of resources. Our name spread by word of mouth amongst the ladies in the community. We also started getting doctors surgeries and social services sending ladies to us.

For the future we need money, we can prove a need for this service through the numbers of ladies that are coming to us. We need to be able to pay the rent. We have a number of volunteers that help to run the centre. I am not paid for the work I do here and there is a limit to how much any one person can give. We get some private donations, but these are usually quite small. We hold fundraising events like pamper evenings where qualified practitioners give their services for free and we charge very cheap rates for therapies. Any money we make comes back to the centre and helps to keep us going. I don’t know where we will be in 5 years time. My vision is to always have this centre as a safe haven for women. It will depend on funding. We are forming partnerships with CVS who have agreed to train our volunteers.

The support we have had from Lancashire BME Pact has been so helpful. They came in with Trust Finder to help me identify where I can apply to for money. They helped with structuring letters, governance training for trustees, capacity building, workshops, training and so much more. It’s the support they give to us which enables us to keep going in the right direction!