During Greater Manchester Hate Crime awareness week, our Near Neighbours coordinator got together with Supporting Sisters, a local organisation based in Bury to run an “Empowering Women, Sharing Love, Peace and Hope” event at the Maccabi Centre in Prestwich.
Supporting Sisters is a newly formed organisation that brings together women of different ethnic backgrounds to address mental health, isolation/ loneliness to build more cohesive communities, and we decided to partner with them in organising this event.
The purpose of the event was to build relationships amongst women of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and non faith backgrounds who reside within the borough and help them work together to raise awareness and take action against hate crime.
The evening bought together 50 women who had the opportunity to hear from local inspiring women how faith contributes towards the work they are involved for bringing people together within the local community. The presentation was followed by a discussion on Hate Crime, led by retired moral philosopher Eve Gerrard.
To engage all the attendees, there was the opportunity to interact with one another with some round table questions around faith, communities and hate crime. The former mayor of Bury who attended the event, Jane Black said ‘thank you so much for organising this event, our conversations were just starting, hope we can find a way to continue them’.
Many women have left the event inspired to continue building stronger relationships between themselves, so we hope this first opportunity was a catalyst for forming cohesive relationships amongst women in Bury.