Pulling Together Asian Women's Group

This month at Pulling Together we have been discussing what stories we would like to include in our comic book. We have confirmed that the following scenarios need to be included: diabetes, CPR, and breast cancer awareness. We have also looked at various software with which we can produce our comic books including Lulu, Storyboard That and Pixton.

This month at Pulling Together we have begun our latest project-The Health & Wellbeing Comic Strip.Through this project we will concentrate on how to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) which is up to 50 per cent higher in South Asians than in the white European population in the UK. And that South Asian communities are known to be up to 6 times more likely to have type 2 diabetes than the general population as well as mental health.This project will enable women of all ages to take part in learning about serious health issues in a fun, creative manner to develop a series of scenarios which will be discussed and resolved in practical terms. 

This month at Pulling Together has seen us promote our latest project.

This month at Pulling Together we have completed our A-Z of Mental Health and Wellbeing project. Thank you to GMVCO for funding the project. Using the embroidered squares as a starting point for conversations. Through this thoughts, aspirations and feelings were encouraged helping to reflect on the importance of health and wellbeing. Members of the group said that they felt that they had benefited from the project by knowing that it helps to talk, where to find out information and where to go if further help is needed. The double sided embroidered square panels will be stored in our Wellbeing Box along with leaflets and contact details of where to go for information and displayed during events at Limelight.

As a thank you to everyone who has taken part in the project, we have given them £20 in Boots vouchers to spend on their own health and well-being.

This month at Pulling Together we have begun to embroider our A-Z of Wellbeing squares.

Seeing the images that were chosen for each square being converted in a program for the sewing machine to read and design is always exciting and watching the machine design each square appear within thirty minutes.

This month at Pulling Together we continued with our Health and Wellbeing conversation and designing our banner. After much discussion the group decided that they would prefer to create individual panels with a positive and negative aspect of health and wellbeing. They felt it was important that we not focus on all positive or all negative images and words as life has its up and downs.

This month at Pulling Together we finished our Curry In A Hurry boxes. Thank you to everyone that shared the images of the delicious dishes they created. Lots of the group said that the boxes were a great help in the month of Ramadan because they took the stress of deciding what to cook at Iftari time and also that using the fresh, healthy products that were delivered to them meant they were less inclined to buy junk food or fry food each evening. They also said that they would keep all of the recipe cards and refer back to them when they wanted a delicious, healthy meal.

This month at Pulling Together we have continued with our A-Z of Mental Health and Wellbeing project. After discussing where we can get help from the young women have been designing our banner. We are excited by some of the wonderful and thought provoking designs that have been created.

This month at Pulling Together we started our latest project funded by GMVCO. The project followed on from our recent projects about Mental Health, Anxiety and Wellbeing. Last year we discussed the report on suicide proportionally higher in young Asian women. The women said they were very concerned as it highlighted the pressure on Asian women by families and their community. As so many factors affect wellbeing the women created a list of what impacts on wellbeing which has now become the idea for this A-Z of Mental Health and Wellbeing project. This project will increase confidence and knowledge whilst giving the young women the opportunity to learn how and what to do to ensure they begin to understand mental health and wellbeing in an informative and fun way while simultaneously be able to highlight sensitive issues with appropriate health professionals.

We will hope to create individual scrapbooks about what we consider essential to our health and Wellbeing and include images of friends and family that we can ask for help if we need to talk. We will also look at where to find professional help if necessary and use this as a resource at the group for the young women to access if they need to. Collectively we will add images created/collected by the group in an A-Z banner that will be displayed in the local library.

This month at Pulling Together as well as welcoming in a New Year we also continued with our Curry in Hurry boxes project. We sent out more boxes for everyone to prepare and once more the response was all positive. Many of the younger members of the group enjoyed being able to prepare a recipe from start to finish knowing that all the ingredients were at hand. Some of the group even found new recipes to prepare using the food that was sent out to them. Thank you to all that shared your wonderful photos of everything you prepared.