Interview with Saheli Founders

Behind a listed and rather grand Victorian gents’ urinal in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, lies Saheli, a gym, also known as an ‘adventure hub’ that has the potential to help transform the lives of Asian and ethnic women in the West Midlands – if its winning formula can be replicated and scaled up. That is the challenge for 2010 and the two women most responsible for making it happen appear more than capable, having already carved out a unique niche in their home territory – and, in the process, delivered a small dose of plain speaking to David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party.

“He visited us and asked us why we provide women only sessions, why should he fund what he called a separatist organization like ours,’ says the redoubtable, Naseem Akhtar, 41, founder of Saheli (‘friend’ in Urdu), long time community activist, raised in Balsall Heath but originally from Pakistan. “I told him that if you want isolated women who don’t go out the front door to become active, healthy and engaged citizens, they have to start somewhere. And that somewhere is Saheli.’

To read more visit: http://launchpad.youngfoundation.org/fund/hia/our_stories/interview-saheli-0

Interview with Mark Peters – Start Again’s Founder and Director

Start Again is a social enterprise that helps young people with mental ill health to re-engage with life and set their own goals. At its heart is a simple idea: begin with the individual’s passion. For many that passion is sport. And sport is what Mark Peters knows well. Mark, in his early thirties, is a former professional footballer, now employed part-time as a community youth worker. He is also the charismatic driving force behind Start Again.

Over the past two years, Start Again, based in Birmingham, has helped more than one hundred young people, aged 13 to 25, many of them unaccompanied minors; coming out of care and drawn from black and ethnic minorities. Start Again helps individuals with mild to more serious mental health problems to make the challenging transition from adolescence to adulthood. It does so by delivering an innovative support system that uses football coaching as a hook that then allows trained volunteers to help the individual to set his own goals, develop social skills, acquire training and qualifications, and make strong and positive connections with others. Volunteers are often young themselves and come from a range of backgrounds including university students and the RAF – unusually in volunteering, many are male.

To read more visit http://launchpad.youngfoundation.org/fund/hia/our_stories/interview-entrepreneur-mark-peters