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Mahdlo has teamed up with Saima from Decorative Culture and Werneth and Freehold Community Development Project (WFCDP) to deliver an exciting new arts based identity and life skills project enabling young women to express themselves, explore their identity and their creative skills through sewing.
The 8 week Big Lottery funded project is offering young people the opportunity to ‘Try Something New’ and the group of girls have stated “they wanted to gain sewing skills and learn more about their identity”. The short course will support them to also learn about fashion, design, measurements, cutting and alterations.
Saima, from Decorative Culture said, “this project is making such a difference to lives of these young women, boosting their confidence, forming new friendships, encouraging team work and problem solving and most importantly empowering them to make decisions and design the project based upon identity and arts”. The young people have been supported on a one to one basis to cut and stitch a bag, a pair of trousers and now moving onto making either a kameez/dress or a jubba (traditional south Asian dress).
One parent has said, “my daughter has never used a sewing machine and was dancing with the trousers she had sewn out of sheer excitement”.
Raz Mohammed, Youth Work Manager at Mahdlo, said: “This partnership work is a perfect combination as it supports local young people to ‘Try Something New’. They are also empowered to make decisions and use art to explore their identity. It also equips them with real life skills and increases enterprise and employability opportunities. Organisations like ours working together enables effective work to take place at grass root levels reaching out to those young people from communities that are and hard to reach.”
The young people are also looking forward to being involved in a fashion project to be held in the New Year during our Girls Zone sessions. For more information please contact Malika Khatun our Girls Zone Co-ordinator here at Mahdlo for more information: malika.khatun@mahdloyz.org / 0161 624 0111
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