HACKNEY BANGLADESHI CULTURAL ASSOCIATION

Hackney Bangladeshi Cultural Association (H.B.C.A) is a charity based in the Victoria Ward of the London Borough of Hackney, established in 1993 to provide a comprehensive range of educational, social and recreational activities for the Bengali community of Hackney. Our organisations aim is to improve the quality of life of our service users by providing a range of comprehensive services in order to help combat problems associated with living in an inner city area. In addition to this we aim to help those from ethnic minorities’ particularly Bangladeshi, Somali and refugee communities for whom other problems such as language, cultural differences make day to day living increasingly difficult. Many of our service users have no or a low standard of education. We also aim to improve the educational, social and personal well being of women and children in order to decrease poverty, social isolation and poor educational attainment. A wide range of sessions are organised to support our community, to help and encourage them to work positively together and develop new skills, knowledge and education. We aim to decrease social isolation and improve community cohesion. We particularly focus on educational, cultural, social and creative opportunities for women and children. 1.4(b) We have been running a Homework Support Class for over eight years and have been previously funded by the Hackney Children’s Fund. As the fund is now closed we are now seeking to secure further funding so that the service can remain. We have been running Holiday Play Schemes sessions for the past 25 years. We work closely with the Hackney council for voluntary services, to meet their targets for health, work and employment, community participation, crime, culture, media and sport. We also have music classes for our youths. Another project running is the Mother and toddler group where we help mother and child to speak English, learn nursery rhymes and so on. We are currently running the following activities at HBCA ־ Cultural event, activities and celebrations. ־ Bengali mother tongue classes. ־ Advice and information service ־ Women Exercise, sewing, art and craft , ESOL classes and parenting courses ־ Bengali mother tongue classes ־ Family outings ־ Music Class All the classes are proving to be very successful, proven through regular attendance, positive feedback during discussion sessions and questionnaires and the steady increase in the number of service users.

HBCA Director: Anjuman Ara Anju