BSC show 'resilience' - Group formed by Somali refugees celebrates its 15th birthday at Irish Centre
Published: 02 June 2011
by TOM FOOT
THE “resilience” of Somali women has been celebrated at a special anniversary event in Camden Town.
More than 200 people attended the 15th birthday of the Camden-based British Somali Community (BSC) at the London Irish Centre in Camden Square on Thursday.
The group was formed by women refugees forced to leave their east African homeland by a brutal civil war in the early 1990s.
BSC co-founder Aisha King said: “When we came we were refugees – black, women and Muslim. The need for a group was overwhelming. We have always had two aims: education for children and women’s health.”
The group, based in Grafton Road, has always been run by women with no “men at the decision table”.
Ms King said: “What is a Somali woman? Resilience – it is our middle name. We are often on the receiving end of what our men do. But we refuse to be victims. We are beautiful people, graceful creatures.”
Ms King said that without Khadija Shireh, another co-founder of the group, the BSC “would never have survived”.
Entertainment on the night included song, a play, a film and a presentation on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The presentation, from two Somali girls called Nimo and Hanad, said that 98 per cent of women born in Somalia are “subjected” to FGM. The religious practice – the partial or entire removal of the young girls’ genitalia with consent of parents – is illegal in this country but remains a key health problem for many women in Camden, they said.
Gynaecologists were invited to the event along with the Mayor of Camden, Labour Councillor Abdul Quadir, and former Town Hall leaders Keith Moffitt and Dame Jane Roberts.
“I have huge admiration and respect for this group,” said Dame Jane. “It is a remarkable achievement to find it still going strong 15 years later.”
Schoolgirls received awards for achieving good school grades and a film showed how community groups are bridging the generation gap between Camden’s Somali teenagers, many of whom can’t speak any of their native language, and their grandparents, most of whom cannot speak any English.
The elders taught the kids traditional Somali proverbs and sayings with messages they said would translate down the ages.
The event heard how Somali children attend supplementary school to improve on their English outside school hours. A play by Somali girls from Camden schools poked fun at how their parents enforced the extra tuition, but showed how important it could be too.
The event returned time and time again to the importance of nurturing the next generation.
Labour councillor for King’s Cross, Owale Olad, one of five Somalian councillors in London, praised the supplementary school that he attended, adding: “I want to encourage more Somali women to become politically active.”