 The Asian Women's Resource Centre is a specialist women’s organisation, providing support to BMER (Black, Minority, Ethnic, Refugee) women and children pan London. The Centre was set up in 1980 and provides free, confidential and professional services to women and children through provisions of advice and information, counselling, advocacy, outreach and support groups and services.
Asian Women's Resource Centre(AWRC) works on issues around violence against women (which include domestic violence, rape, forced marriages and honour killings). We also work on the challenges associated with violence such as homelessness, welfare benefits, child contact and immigration.
AWRC has provided support to hundreds of women and children throughout the year, including through one to one support, outreach group support, advocacy and counselling.
We also provide training to professionals on specific issues which affect BMER women. In addition, we seek to highlight the needs of BMER communities and ensure that their voices influence policy and legislative changes.
One of our overarching strengths is our ability to facilitate focus groups and involve users in consultations. We have taken part in several consultations including the Home Office Consultation on whether to make forced marriage a crime, Neighbourhood Renewal Community Consultation, Brent Crime Audit,the Why Women campaign and the Domestic Violence Forum User Consultation.
We are specially equipped to serve the needs of Asian community because of our cultural and religious understanding and ability to deliver empathetic services in six community languages Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. Furthermore our service is not restricted to women from BMER groups, we have an open door policy towards all women in need, currently our services are accessed by a range of diverse communities including Arabic, European and women from the African sub continent.
AWRC also offers a domestic violence outreach project in partnership with Brent Women’s Aid, The aim of the project is to provide support to African Caribbean and Asian women experiencing domestic violence. The African Caribbean worker is based at BWA and the Asian worker at the AWRC. This project also contributes to the every child matters outcomes which include staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving and making a positive contribution. The project has expanded to include the DVAP (Domestic Violence Advocacy Project ) based at Kilburn Police Station.
AWRC is an active partner on Brent’s Domestic Violence Forum – the Forum is a practitioners Forum consisting of organisations both from the Statutory and Voluntary Sectors coming together to improve multi-agency responses to domestic violence within the Borough. We were involved in making a film entitled: Short Stories Long lives, facing the challenges around domestic violence. It provides nine accounts from users, of their experiences of domestic violence. The film is representative of our diverse community in Brent. It gives the message that domestic violence can affect anyone. This film is used as a training tool and to raise awareness on the complex nature of domestic violence.
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