Founded over a decade ago, Leaders in Community is a youth-led charity dedicated to empowering young people in Tower Hamlets. With a variety of creative learning programmes designed around leadership and governance, the charity offers a fantastic year-round programme that is free and accessible to all young people. As Leaders in Community approaches its 11th birthday this December, we spoke to CEO Momtaz Ajid to learn more about the amazing work the charity does.

What does Leaders in Community do?
Leaders in Community (LiC) was founded in 2006 by a group of young people who wanted to have a say in the way local infrastructure was provided, overcome the barriers to progression they and their peers were facing, and experience the satisfaction of bringing about positive change for the benefit of themselves and their community. To this day, LiC’s strategic decision-making is still entirely undertaken by young people, which provides us with a unique perspective and ability to connect with our peers through our two core strands: Youth Leadership and Youth Social action. We run a number of programmes that inspire and empower young people to be active and vocal contributors to the social, economic and cultural well-being of their community. Youth Leadership projects provide accredited skills training, work experience, and advice and guidance to help young people secure meaningful employment. Youth Social Action projects provide tangible opportunities for young people to tackle the issues that matter to them most, through project based volunteering, holding community events and campaigns for change.

What challenges do the young people you work with face?
Lansbury Ward (where we are based) ranks as the most deprived in Tower Hamlets on the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015. As local people ourselves, we are aware of the issues facing local people including food poverty, poor health, rising violent crime and high levels of unemployment. Many young people we work with have very poor diets and there are high levels of child obesity and diabetes. As mentioned, unemployment is significantly higher in the Teviot area compared with the rest of the country and Tower Hamlets also features the highest rate of child poverty in the whole of the UK; in Lansbury specifically, 45% live in poverty compared with the UK average of 20%. There also exists concerning figures surrounding mental-health related illnesses.

There is a lack of well-used community spaces in the area for people to come together and feel a connection with their community, lacking perhaps due to the feelings of loneliness, isolation and perceived or actual obstacles to engagement that come with the various forms of disadvantage mentioned above. This most likely contributes to residents reporting that they feel less satisfied with their communities compared to the UK average, which leads onto other more concerning bi-products, such as a surge in violent crime, earning Tower Hamlets a place in the eight most violent boroughs in London.

Awareness of these issues is key, as they help us to construct an inclusive and all-encompassing roster of activities that will be of genuine benefit to local people. Our activities focus on health and wellbeing, skills, training and employability programmes, and community togetherness projects such as social action campaigns and community events. All of these contribute towards a more connected, healthy and prosperous borough.

Do you have any stories you would like to share?
Abeed has been working with Leaders in Community for nine years. He joined as a young person and got involved in the workshops and volunteering opportunities.  Abeed was very unsure of his future and wanted some guidance around university. He was instrumental in constructing our Be.leaders programme and took part in the first cohort of young people. In 2012, he had the opportunity to join the board as an apprentice, where he learnt how the charity is managed. After going to university, Abeed re-joined LiC as a board member, and this year was voted in as chair of the board. His role is to work with finance, marketing and strategy teams to make key decisions about the future of Leaders in Community.

Outside of LiC, Abeed currently works for ConnectWise Software as a Regional Sales Manager. The role includes assisting IT Service companies in using software to increase their efficiency through automation. Alongside this, he runs an e-commerce business – which has recently expanded to serve Spain, Italy, France and Germany.

What are the current challenges that your organisation is facing?
Our organisation, like any youth sector organisation, faces challenges with remaining dynamic and relevant in order to engage our young target group (11- 25yrs). To overcome this, our youth-led nature is key. We take a ‘continuous co-design’ approach to our work with young people, where not only do they help us design programmes but are also actively involved throughout, constantly inputting how they want the programme to be adapted to be engaging and effective. For instance, our Be.social programme helps young people identify a local, social issue and campaign to make a difference in this area. In this programme, young people pick the issues to focus on and, with light touch support from project leads, decide on the best way to address this. This puts them in the driver’s seat and centres sessions on issues they actually care about.

If you are keen to support Leaders in Community, please get in touch with Antonia.Williams@elba-1.org.uk to find out how you can help.