# Transcript

Stefanie Sinclair
Hello - I’m Stefanie Sinclair. I am a lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University and I am sitting here with Sufia Alam, who is the Centre Manager at the Maryam Centre in the East London Mosque.
Sufia, can you tell me what is the Maryam Centre?
Sufia Alam
Okay so the Maryam Centre was established in 2013 primarily to accommodate prayer facilities for women. My role in the Maryam Centre is to develop projects that meet the needs of women in the community um to provide a service that um supports women and women’s rights. Also to enhance um their learning pathways um and to really empower them you know through education, through social programmes, through um seminars and conferences that I hold on issues that relate to our community. So
We have to look at the history of um migration in this area and of course we had men and women obviously the first generation had men who had come in and then they later brought their families um and when at last the – the community came um together it was the Seventies um and early Eighties where um there was a lot of racism in this area so a lot of the women stayed at home um there was a lot of the rag trade around this area so a lot of people were working especially women, they were working at home or they were um basically housewives because the men were primarily the bread winners so they'd go out but there were um at a time where there was a lot of tension so women kind of stayed indoors. But I think what happened in the late Eighties um coming up to the Nineties was I think through religious institutions like us the East London mosque where people um felt a bit more comfortable um to come because it was a religious obligation to find out about your religion and to educate your children as the children were growing up. Also in this particular area um their local authority worked really well with the communities to stamp out racism and fascism that existed so much in this area and I think that gave empowerment for women to come out of the houses and as a community worker I feel that you know this is what I've worked on for the last twenty years to get women out of the houses and empower them and I think um a setting like the Maryam Centre is that ideal hub where people can come together and they can thrash out their ideas and really the Maryam Centre could be whatever you wanted it to be so you knows if they’ve asked for counselling we've got a counsellor. We've got yoga. We've got a gymnasium you know keep fit classes to karate classes. Whatever people want it’s – I think why we are successful is because we've portrayed this mosque or the Maryam Centre as um theirs you know. It was the peoples. It didn’t belong to the trustees or it didn’t belong to the workers. It belonged to the community and I think that sense of belong, the sense of it’s our mosque um is really powerful and I think um that’s really helped in terms of empowerment.