Cllr Sharaf Mahmood and local community/faith leaders have been meeting a few times to talk about their local neighbourhood in Green Street East. What emerged was a shared desire to build relationships and neighbourliness across cultures and ages. They also shared a concern to meet the needs of youth in the area and for them to become more involved and engaged in the community and across cultures.
Cllr Sharaf Mahmood invited Conflict and Change to facilitate a planning meeting with these inter-community leaders with a view to planning a large Community Conversation event on 4.2.10. Little did he know that we decided to run the planning meeting as a Community Conversation as this seemed the ideal way to hear the underlying concerns and vision of the group as well as their ideas for the event!
Three Safer Neighbourhood officers joined representatives from Green Street East Mosque, Swaminaryan Temple, Latimer church and the Harold Road community centre as well as Cllr Sharaf and officer Shabana at Harold Road community centre on 21.1.10.
Everyone had an opportunity to share what it was about the area that caused them to get involved and volunteer or work there. Two themes emerged. (A) Community theme: They wanted neighbours to know each other and build good links and relationships, across cultures and generations, including and involving transient groups and cultures. (B) Young people were a prominent concern: engaging with them, hearing their perspectives, letting them know that their voices/opinions matter, wanting them to experience good relationships with people from other religions, how to get them to make the most of their lives and opportunities, wanting the streets to be safe for everyone, wanting respectful relationships between the generations.
Following on from this small groups looked at ideas for the large event with one community police officer in each group. It was agreed to call the event “Community Talks” and that each community leader would bring along a group of young people. Conflict and Change agreed to run activities that were fun and interactive and that would get groups and ages to inter-mingle. It was also agreed that it was vital that the young people who attended knew that their views would be taken seriously and that the ideas would be taken forward. The planning group agreed that this event would be part of ongoing events and activities in the area.
“Conflict and Change have a unique approach to the way in which they facilitate sessions – it’s very down to earth and participants become involved quite easily and quickly”
Shabana Qadir, Member Services Officer, Democratic Services.
“The event we are planning with Conflict and Change is about bringing communities together and a voice for young people”
Lead Cllr for Green Street forum area, Cllr Sharaf Mahmood.
