“Without Big Local, I’d be lost in the community.”

Content warning: Nyah’s story includes references to domestic violence, mental health abuse and child sexual abuse.

I’ve always found it hard to get on in life. People don’t accept me for who I am – they don’t want to get to know me. I am a Rastafari woman, so I am always judged from the outside.

From 2017 to where we are now, I’ve been volunteering with Big Local. The difference is, they accept me for who I am. They’ve always supported me in whatever I wanted to do. Once I found Big Local, I enjoyed getting up every day. Working for my community gives me a sense of purpose I didn’t have when I worked for corporate organisations.

A young and diverse community

I know that a lot of people don’t like it around here, but I do. When I moved here in 2014 it was foreign to me. I wasn’t familiar with the area at all.

It took time, but through Big Local, I’ve got to know the people in the neighbourhood. I went from feeling alienated to now, when I walk down the street and people say: “Hi Nyah, are you alright love?”

Bringing us together helped us to build our strength.

I see a good balance of Black people, whereas living where I did before, in Redditch, it was mainly white people. People come from all over in Birchfield. There are a lot of Africans – from North, South, East and West Africa – and also Arabs and Asians. I like seeing people from different nations around the world.

The challenge here is that people are struggling to make ends meet. They get their benefits, but because they haven’t got the support to learn how to budget, we see them struggling on the streets, begging, or shouting in anger because they are on hard drugs.

Combatting loneliness

One of the first things I got involved in at Big Local was the women’s group. There were about nine of us, mainly Caribbean and Asian women. We used to meet on a Thursday, say from 10 till 12, and then we’d have lunch. We took it in turns to cook the meal, so every week we were eating either Asian, Caribbean or British food, all of it financed by Big Local. 

It started because some of us were lonely. Bringing us together helped us to build our strength. It gave us the courage to be more outgoing, rather than just being silent and frightened to communicate with people. 

We made friends – that was the biggest impact for me. We just enjoyed coming together. No-one was judged – we were all accepted for who we are and what we are.

In 2018, some of the women’s group members worked on a storytelling project with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (REP) which culminated in a performance.

My story was about a childhood of domestic violence, mental health abuse and child sexual abuse. I had done some counselling before that, so I was able to express what happened without it upsetting me. Talking about it made me feel good because I was telling my story, and I could see the audience were really interested. You could hear a pin drop in that studio.

Exploring Black history with the next generation

Now my involvement in Big Local is through my passion: youth work. I want young people to have the support I didn’t have as a child.  

I help run a youth club every school holiday. The young people are aged eight to 14. We have activities like arts and crafts or cooking, or we take them out for the day. Once we went to a recording studio to record a song I wrote about what Big Local means to me. The children sang the chorus and added in their own bits of rapping.  

If it wasn’t for the youth club, there would be nowhere for young people in Birchfield to go. The mothers enjoy bringing them to the sessions and I love working with them. 

For me, Black history is knowing who I am, where I come from and where I am going.

Last Black History Month we did a workshop where we printed off pictures and information about Black heroes and sheroes and displayed them up on the wall. And we asked the children to bring in pictures of their parents or grandparents so they could talk about them to the group. We want to help the children learn about their history and about what makes them who they are. 

For me, Black history is knowing who I am, where I come from and where I am going. People tend to celebrate the Windrush Veterans, whereas I want to celebrate Africa as well. The generation after Windrush see that we started off in Africa before coming to the Caribbean and Europe. We want to honour our identity and celebrate the fact that we are still here to tell the tale.  

Big hopes for the future

You know, without Big Local, I’d be lost in the community. There would be nowhere for me to go. It will close in March 2024, but they are setting up Birchfield Community Association, a charity that will continue its work.

My hope is that I can be a part of that and continue with my passion as a youth worker. It is what I want to do in life. Big Local has given me the room to blossom in it.

Interview by Sarah Raymond.

Read more inspiring stories from the people delivering Big Local on our Voices page.