71 Educators providing Courses in Liverpool

Liverpool Arabic Centre

liverpool arabic centre

Liverpool

Liverpool Arabic Centre (LAC) was initially set up as Nadey Al – Cul in 1995 after a group of parents from Yemeni and Arabic backgrounds raised concerns with each other about their children’s educational and personal development which was being affected by negative experiences they were having within schools and unaddressed issues present due having dual heritage backgrounds. The parents’ aim was to set up a club to support children and young people from Yemeni/Arabic backgrounds for whom there was limited support available from statutory services and a lack of knowledge around specific cultural and religious issues. The aim of the club was to instill cultural pride and support the personal development of the children and young people as well as to encourage the development of their own identities within wider society by educating the children in Arabic language and also through promoting Arabic cultural awareness to the wider community particularly local schools through arts, performance and discussion. In September 2000 Nadey Al – Cul changed its name to Liverpool Yemeni Arabic Club (LYAC) to reflect its expanding service provision and provide a focus on its target group of beneficiaries. LYAC’s activities continued to focus on teaching Arabic language to children and young people, organising educational and cultural activities for families and putting on a Yemeni/Arabic festival to promote and encourage cultural awareness to people from non-Arabic backgrounds. LYAC opened its official premises in Lodge Lane in September 2000. A productive partnership was then formed with the Bluecoat Arts Centre – Nadey Al Bluecoat –which has since developed into the highly successful annual Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival. In 2006 LYAC went through a process of re-branding in order to address the changing needs of the community and to cater for the wider Arab communities settling in the Merseyside area in recent years. LYAC became the Liverpool Arabic Centre

InnovateHer

innovateher

Liverpool

Only 19% of the digital tech workforce in the UK is female, compared to 37% across all sectors. It’s proven that the gender gap costs the tech sector time and money, but it also contributes to the challenges we have sourcing talent and widens the digital skills gap. Our exploration of diversity Our journey began in 2013, as Liverpool Girl Geeks. We created a community of like-minded people in Liverpool who wanted to progress gender equality in tech. In the beginning we organised meet ups for adults, but we soon realised that we could make a real difference if we mobilised the community, so we began running educational programmes led by industry with the aim of helping minority groups progress. In 2015 we launched our first educational programmes for teens. We recognised that we needed to work with girls as young as twelve to tackle the gender stereotypes that are so entrenched within women by the time they reach adulthood. What we noticed within our first few cohorts of teen girls was the lack of background diversity. Students that attended were from similar backgrounds, with supportive parents who may already work in tech (or a related field), from mostly white families, who could afford to bring their child to the sessions we were hosting in Liverpool City Centre each week. Our Co-Founders are women who have both grown up in low income families and wanted to make sure that our programmes reached girls from different backgrounds. As two (relatively young!) white women, they were also acutely aware that we needed to work with a diverse set of industry mentors to ensure that we had a broad range of people of all ages, backgrounds and identities to inspire the students. This includes working with male role models too, as we don’t want to exclude anyone from our mission. A turning point was at the Big Bang Fair in 2016, where we were exposed to hundreds of schools across the U.K. The students that attended were from different nationalities, ethic backgrounds and a multitude of faiths. We realised that to engage a truly diverse range of young people we had to remove all barriers to them accessing our programmes. Shortly afterwards we rebranded as InnovateHer and took our educational programmes into schools. We prioritised working in disadvantaged areas across Liverpool and Manchester. Since then we have worked with girls from a broad range of backgrounds; including families who are asylum seekers, looked after children, girls in faith schools and girls who identify as non-binary, trans or queer.