As charities move to online activities and fundraising, some organisations are finding it hard to establish themselves online. Studenteer was on hand when Nadera from NAFS needed support.
Tell us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Nadera Amini and I live in Bradford, a very multicultural and multi-religious city in West Yorkshire. Twenty years ago, I moved from Germany and now I am a mother of five children.
Living here, I learned about the diversity and barriers for BAME girls and women to engage in sports as well as in cohesion work with other communities.
What does your organisation NAFS do?
NAFS, is a community organisation with a charitable purpose and stands for Nutrition Advice Fitness & Self Care. NAFS is an Arabic word for our Soul, Psyche and Ego!
We offer:
1 : Sports and Fitness : Zumba / Aquazumba / Fencing / Netball / Boxersize / Pilates and Multisports
2 : Nutritional and wellbeing advice for the body
3 : Self-care and mental health workshops for the mind
4 : Advice and interfaith cohesion work on current topics and stigma to promote tolerance and acceptance.
When did you realise the need for a new online brand identity?
Due to Covid-19 all our activities came to a halt and could see how everyone was struggling physically as well as mentally. I never stopped working from home; being a Social Prescriber and Homeopath I started supporting everyone with one-to-one sessions via Zoom, email and phone.
Immediately it became clear that we all had to help each other to overcome the pandemic and reduce its effect on families, especially for the BAME community, who are most vulnerable due to health inequalities and education about self-care.
I was aware that somebody from the community needed to intervene and support the people and families. All our activities are self-funded and demand keeps growing day by day.
Then I thought, “How can we prepare ourselves to be ready once we are out of lockdown?”
We actually had no virtual platform to share our skills and services in the community. We only had Twitter and WhatsApp as our social media platforms, we didn’t have a website or any resources to pay for it.
How did you find out about us?
On Twitter, I luckily read about the concept of Furlonteer helping charities during this hard time, I signed up thinking that the help could expand my services for virtual use, as before the pandemic we ran more face to face programs in the community and now that platform was gone.
We received support from both Studenteer and Furlonteer, they became a big part of my life and helped me to meet new people with different skills and a caring nature.
How did working with Studenteer help you?
I worked with a few volunteers from both Furlonteer and Studenteer. I got matched up with Ian, a software engineer and Bianca who helped us to understand the content of our website as well as Dafyd for video effects and Daniel from Studenteer.
We are positive about our future as we are using our brand new website and exclusive logo created with prayers and passion to roll out our services and activities back into the community.
Would you recommend Studenteer to other charities?
It is a great initiative. It is so easy to sign up as a Studenteer with your skills and expertise to share with good cause, serving humanity and mankind. We at NAFS already have embedded this ideology to help mankind and empower others to take care of their ‘NAFS’.
I will also sign up as a volunteer and lend my time and skills to serve charities and communities to become a healthier and happier society especially after the ill effect of Covid-19.
