WHO WE ARE
Our History
WHFS was established in 1981 by a group of local community workers living in Tower Hamlets who came together under the umbrella of Tower Hamlets Association for Racial Justice and applied for Community Action Group funding through the Manpower Services Commission scheme. Their aim was to enable access to maternity services for ethnic minority women who did not speak English as a first language.
They were successful in raising funds, initially for one year only and were able to offer employment to local Bengali and Somali women outreach workers. The outreach workers worked at grassroots level with women from the local ethnic communities and by 1983 nine Bengali, Somali, Chinese and Vietnamese advocates were employed through funding from the GLC Women's Committee and The Commission of European Communities.