A bit of our history

The journey of our organisation began in 2008, but our own personal journeys began a lot earlier than that. We were founded and are run by people who left Somalia during its long civil war in the 1990s. Settling in the UK, we had to adapt to a new country, establish ourselves, and bring up our children. As the years went by, we began to realise that we had something valuable that we wanted to share with our children – our culture and our language. We saw that the more children learned about their heritage and language, the more they understood their parents and developed into rounded human beings.

Our projects began with cultural projects making books of stories in Somali and English. We went on to create a Mother Tongue school for children, and to develop this into a Supplementary School that helped children to do well at their mainstream schools. These projects led us onto further educational projects for adults as well as children, including projects teaching healthy eating and diet, projects providing employment training and projects teaching craft and sewing skills.

We continue to develop our ideas, our skills and our projects. Our journey has not finished, and we hope to continue to create projects and share with everyone the cultural heritage that we have brought to the UK.