Sabera Ahsan – Alhambra Women Network

Last week I had the pleasure to arrange a photo session with Sabera Ahsan. Find the outcome of this below:

Policy advisor, script writer, counter-terrorism expert, diversity and equality freelance trainer, Sabera Ahsan is a woman full of energy that has recently decided to leave her position as civil servant to devote all her time and motivation to create a charity (Alhambra Women Network) aiming to empower women from Asian backgrounds, a collective that have historically faced freedom constraints.

Currently, the main project Sabera is running through her charity is an online Magazine  She is hoping it will be  “The Time magazine” for the Asian women.

From her home in South London, Sabera aims  her online magazine to become a window to the world for the global audience that Asian women are, and a virtual meeting place for all of them.

 

Dee Dee, Helps the homeless

After facing some health issues that prevented her of continuing working, Donna decided to put in practice a personal project that she had in mind since long ago. To try to help the ever-growing number of homeless people in hers (Tower Hamlets) and surrounding boroughs.

Donna, Tracey (her school teacher friend) and their team of volunteers deliver a couple of times a week in her Peugeot 206 food (that she cooks herself at home), clothes, tents, sleeping bags (donated or bought with the donations she receive) to homeless currently living in shelters or in the street.

Despite not being a licensed charity, it is very clear that the social role she plays makes her a role model for the community.

Her effort and motivation have been rewarded recently with an honorary award from DLR as a Community Champion.

When asked about why she decided to do this, she spontaneously replied “I don’t know, just felt like doing it”.  Most of us are constantly looking for excuses to not to do (or even try) what we are meant to.

More information on Donna’s Project in: “Dee Dee, Helps the homeless”

And to contact her: deedeehomeless@outlook.com

Donna Farrugia, “Dee Dee, Helps the homeless”, pictured with a sleeping bag like the ones she hands over to homeless and a knife she uses to cook food for them.

Dee Dee, Helps the homeless

 

Anna, hands on

Anna is a very active woman that loves travelling and does not like standing still wasting her time.

Currently living in London, and aware of how important are the looks when looking for a job in this city. Having gone herself through a hard time when looking for a job she decided to ease that experience for others the best way she could. She decided to offer her hairdressing services for free to those actively looking for a job, aiming to not only to look help them to look sharp, but also to increase their self-esteem.

Amy, Natural-borm activist

Jolly by nature, always with a smile for everyone and full of energy, Amy (in addition to her job in a NGO) is a passionate Amnesty International member and activist, who campaigned heavily on their two year ‘STOP TORTURE’ campaign, focused on targeting five countries where torture is used and lobbying the governments of those countries.

But her most recent pet project is being involved with ‘Sutton Coldfield International Development Group’, or SCIDG; a local group of concerned citizens who aim to raise awareness locally about international poverty levels.

The British government has given £600 million of UK taxpayers money in the form of ‘international aid’, to a scheme called The ‘New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition’ which, it is claimed, will lift 50 million people out of poverty in Africa by 2022.  In actual fact, this ‘aid’ money is benefiting transnational corporations such as Monsanto and Syngenta, as it enables them to acquire large areas of African land, often pushing local farmers from land they have farmed for generations.  Activists such as Amy argue that the ‘New Alliance’ is basically promoting the global corporate takeover of the food system.  Aid money is being given to African governments on the basis that they make it easier for these transnational agri-businesses to operate there; this includes pressuring governments to adopt new ‘seed laws’, whereby farmers will only be allowed to purchase expensive, patented seeds from designated suppliers.  Farmers may be criminalised for using their own seeds, which are not approved by these companies, and will not be permitted to swap and share seeds as per their own traditional farming methods.

Amy says: “As UK Taxpayers, we do not want our taxes to be used to cause harm to local people in other countries whilst benefiting multinational corporations. The ‘#FreeTheSeed’ campaign has been launched in opposition to this situation, promoting alternative farming methods, including traditional agroecological techniques and practices.”

Amy, Sutton Coldfield International Development Group

Amy, Sutton Coldfield International Development Group

Amy, Sutton Coldfield International Development Group

Laura, IRMO

“There is not hope, but continuous struggle” by David Cooper- this is one of the premises that enlightens Laura Villegas’ work; she is a Colombian lawyer and a teacher who has been living in London since 1998.

Laura has gone through an educational process within the popular struggles in the UK where she has been involved for the past 20 years. This proximity to her as a political person and to the struggles has positioned her as a vanguard within her community.

Laura works at the Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation as a legal adviser in immigration matters. On her day to day work, Laura finds in people a shared hope and resilience to keep walking towards her utopia of having a world that is borderless. Laura is also a painter who passes her knowledge to the younger children of IRMO.

Her outstanding contribution to her community has made her achieve the Community Worker of the year award by The Lukas Awards 2015.

Laura, cheerful and full of vitality.

The People´s Kitchen

Looking for new targets for the photo project, I have ended up finding these chaps…

http://www.thepeopleskitchen.co.uk/about/

”
The People´s Kitchen: The Story So Far…

People’s Kitchen was set up in late 2010 by Steve Wilson, with a grant of £2,000. This bought all our equipment, (including an oven and hobs) and a little time to get the idea established.
Over the years we have grown through word of mouth to 6-8 core members who know the full running of the Sunday Feasts. Every Sunday for 4 years we ran our community feasts at Passing Clouds in Dalston, transforming the dance floor into a kitchen, and helping volunteers cook a dishes for 30-100 guests, on a dinner by donation basis.  People like you would arrive at 2.30pm to help peel, chop and cook, or at 6pm to eat, and tidy up afterwards. Most Sundays 8 to 20 volunteers would turn up from different parts of London,and further afield, to help make a Buffet Banquet from food waste.
”

More info in the documentary below:

The People´s Kitchen

Worth spending 20 minutes on the video…

(not everything on the market is for sale…)

Asamblea Arganda 15M (VIII)

Back to work after a loooong break 🙂 new photo shoots have been completed and some more are on its way, though for the time being I’ll update the blog with photos I did not publish before.

Here we have Jose, a freelance journalist that kindly introduced me to the “Asamblea Arganda 15M (VIII)”

Jose freelance journalist