Somalis in Britain find their voice at last

Tomorrow evening, tens of thousands of families across Britain will gather around their television sets, shunning the BBC and commercial channels in favour of Universal TV, the Somali community’s most popular forum.

At 8pm, their eyes will be glued to Somali Voices, a programme that aims to tackle the community’s most difficult issues head on. Last week it highlighted the importance of education and analysed the drop-out rates and academic achievements of young Somalis. This week it will examine drug problems, including the use of qat, the legal drug that is prevalent in Somali society.

Despite the enormity of the issues it tackles, Somali Voices is put together with a tiny budget and produced by a small group of young men — who together form the London Somali Youth Forum (LSYF) — working from a rundown council estate in Camden, North London.

But it is testament to their dedication that they have succeeded in reaching a community that is so often considered unreachable. For decades, one of Britain’s largest African communities (there are up to 160,000 Somalis in London alone, and tens of thousands more in cities including Birmingham, Leicester and Cardiff) has also been one of its most marginalised.

Stereotypes associated with Somalia and the Somali community in the UK can be conveyed in the following words: violence, anarchy, knife crime, qat and piracy, to name but a few.

However, Mohamed Hassan, one of the founders of the LSYF, can think of a few others: “Helplessness, voicelessness, invisibility,” the 34-year-old youth worker said. “There’s a lack of representation, a fear and distrust of authority: these things are widespread in our community. That’s what we want to change. The forum hopes to address these issues.”

In a bold and ambitious initiative supported by the Metropolitan Police, the LSYF aims to turn around the stereotypes and the fortunes of its much-maligned community.

By creating a way for Somali youth to air grievances and by promoting positive role models, offering sporting and educational programmes and providing a link between the authorities and the community, the LSYF aims to turn young Somalis away from gang culture and the other serious problems that affect them.

The forum is represented by youth workers from 16 London boroughs, who meet regularly to discuss strategies to combat gangs, for example, or to encourage better attendance at schools. As well as the television programme, they run award ceremonies to celebrate the achievements of Somali youth in education and conduct outreach work.

They are being used as a pathway for local councils, the Met and the Home Office to reach the community, something that has proved difficult in the past because of the mistrust of authority that runs deep among many in the Somali community.

Abdiwahab Ali, 25, an administrator of the forum, said that its work was “breaking down barriers”.

“Because of the dictatorships back home [in Somalia], the authorities are feared by Somalis. We are increasing the ease [of the community] with police here.”

The approach is already paying dividends. When a man was stabbed on the Old Kent Road in southeast London last year, the police found themselves in an all too familiar situation: investigating a murder in a community that was unwilling to talk. The perpetrator was a Somali man and many locals knew who he was.

A representative from the LSYF was able to persuade witnesses to come forward and the murderer was subsequently convicted.

Young people in danger of becoming victims of gang violence have also been rehoused in other boroughs, using links that were made through the forum.

LSYF members have organised training programmes with different agencies, including managers at Camden council, to highlight the cultural needs and other requirements of the Somali community. They also help out as translators on occasions.

The aim is to generate greater cohesion between the community and the authorities, ultimately leading to better integration of the Somalis into British life. They are keen to combat the negative, and often unfair, stereotypes associated with the community and to generate positive news stories.

Ibrahim Isse, 30, director of the Somali Youth Development Resource Centre in Camden, which works with the forum, said that in the past year, a sense of “one unity and one voice” had been developed within the Somali community.

“In the past, the local authorities had problems with reaching the community. Now, we can do that for them,” he said.

“We don’t have representatives in the political arena. We don’t have MPs, wealthy businessmen, councillors. But there is a drive and a change that is coming from the young people. We will no longer be invisible.”

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Source: Times online