The Bangladeshi Women’s Association (BWA) has spent almost 40 years supporting the diverse communities of Tipton and the surrounding area. What began as a women and toddler group in 1985 has grown into a thriving community organisation dedicated to supporting people of all ages, demographics and backgrounds.

Founded by Syeda Khatun, the BWA is committed to widening networks, reducing isolation and building knowledge, confidence and opportunities within the local community.

With the help of a £39,942 Community Grant over two years from the Greggs Foundation, the Bangladeshi Women’s Association recently recruited a new Community Support Officer with responsibility for delivering a number of services on behalf of the organisation. This has included coordinating essential food bank supplies, organising Healthy Living Workshops and working with local learning providers to provide digital learning sessions, English language classes, and arts and crafts workshops.

In addition to covering staff salaries, the funding is also enabling the BWA to purchase essential food supplies and facilitate a number of other activities and initiatives.

As BWA CEO, Syeda Khatun, explains,

“Having salaried staff is so important in helping us get our programmes off the ground. We’re very lucky to have a lot of volunteers who help us run activities. But without paid staff to coordinate efforts and manage the volunteers, we wouldn’t be able to help people effectively.”

While the BWA are fortunate to receive support from a variety of different funders, Syeda says the community grant provided by the Greggs Foundation has an essential point of difference to others available:

“Normal funders don’t typically provide funding for projects like the ones we wanted to run. With the support of the Greggs Foundation we’ve got the freedom to use the money flexibly, adapt the programme as we go and basically get on and do the job to achieve our objectives as an organisation.

“We’re able to dedicate all of our time to achieving improvements in the quality of people’s lives and developing that social cohesion.”

A holistic approach to essential services

Now spread across three premises – the Tipton Muslim Community Centre, Jubilee Park Community Centre and the Community Allotment – the BWA is able to provide a valuable combination of employability services and skills development, wellbeing support, food provision and practical advice.

Syeda says,

“In many cases, we simply work with local residents to help them access the benefits they need to improve their lives. Other times it’s to develop language skills that can help to open doors to new employment opportunities or improve their health. 

“The world has also become digital now and almost everything is online. But many of the people we support aren’t computer literate. So, helping them to develop those skills and learn to use the internet more easily is really important in helping them become more self-sufficient – whether it’s contacting the council or using NHS apps for doctor’s appointments or prescriptions.”

Budgeting workshops and financial competence are also highly valued services, delivered by the team at the BWA. As Syeda explains, the impact of these varied services can run deeper than enhancing employment prospects or improving financial responsibility:

“Often it’s as simple as becoming better at communicating with teachers at their kids’ school, interacting with other parents or being able to integrate more effectively. That’s vital for the community and it also plays a role in improving people’s mental health.

“Being unable to interact with members of the wider community can cause people to feel anxious, isolated and ultimately, depressed.”

 At the heart of the BWA’s work is a commitment to making people feel comfortable, valued and part of the area in which they live. Nowhere is this better showcased than through “Welcoming Space”, a regular initiative that sees volunteers cooking up meals from a variety of different cultures and cuisines with the intention of bringing people together over tasty food. Syeda says,

“No matter whether it’s Arabic food, Caribbean food or Polish food we’re cooking up, we always find that dining together helps people come together and break down barriers.”

 At the Community Allotment, the BWA team not only grow food for these meals, they also provide cookery classes and therapeutic gardening sessions to make the allotment a multi-functional space for battling social isolation. 

Where required, the BWA offers further assistance in the form of food parcels to those who are vulnerable and in need, as well as feminine hygiene products and hygiene products for parents of new babies.

The importance of core funding for the Bangladeshi Women’s Association

Having first gained support from the Greggs Foundation during the Covid pandemic to support people in the Tipton area, Syeda and the BWA team were quick to see the value in the Greggs Foundation Community Grants when the new programme launched in early 2024.

Beyond the financial support, Syeda emphasises the value of working with funders who are willing to engage with the charity’s work:

 “It’s refreshing for us to get support from an organisation that clearly cares. The Greggs Foundation team have been out to visit us on a number of occasions and were so keen to meet the beneficiaries, meet our team and understand what we are doing. They are very much interested in the people they are helping and the impact their funding is having. That’s really important to us.”

Having visited the Bangladeshi Women’s Association in Tipton and seen first-hand how the Foundation’s money is being utilised to improve prospects and support better wellbeing, Greggs Foundation Manager, Tracy Lynch, commented,

“The work that the Bangladeshi Women’s Association have done within the local community over the past 40 years is hard to overstate. The organisation has touched so many lives and improved the prospects of thousands of people. Being able to play a small part in supporting the future success of the BWA’s programmes and initiatives is precisely what our Community Grants are all about.”