Women's Voices creates safe spaces for growth, healing, learning, leadership, and opportunity.

WHO
WE ARE

Women’s Voices is a feminist organisation, established in 2013 and rooted in the Longsight area of Manchester, with a reach across Greater Manchester. We are by women, for women. We provide a safe, women-only, non-judgemental space where women from global majority communities including women seeking asylum and refugees can build confidence, gain new skills to develop pathways to employment and become the leaders rooted in grassroots community power.

As a women’s organisation in the city where the suffragette movement began, we hold the word feminist deliberately: the forces that keep women down are political, and naming them is part of the work. Our mission is to enable women to achieve empowerment, equality and inclusion, to overcome the barriers holding them back, and to become ambassadors for other women, so that women’s voices are nurtured, heard and amplified.

WHAT WE DO

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01

TRAINING

We deliver accredited and practical courses, including ESOL, food hygiene, community interpreting, alongside workshops on food waste reduction, recycling, and healthy, affordable eating.

Training, Work and Skills Programmes

Women arrive here having been taught that their skills don’t count and their English isn’t enough. We build confidence, identify transferable skills, and open real pathways to employability and financial independence, because economic independence is how women break the cycles of deprivation and dependency that institutional barriers create.

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02

VOLUNTEERING

Our volunteers run weekly drop-ins, lead environmental and food-growing sessions, deliver arts, crafts and sewing activities, and organise trips and events, with many former service users now volunteering themselves.

Weekly Drop-Ins

A women-only, women-led space, because trust is not given to systems that have failed us; it’s built between women. Here we share skills, build networks, share food, and name the barriers we face daily, racism, gender-based violence, isolation, and immigration systems that treat us as a problem to be managed rather than women with something to offer.

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03

COMMUNITY

A space to celebrate sisterhood, where women from diverse cultures organise their own cultural events, share tea and meals, and access support that mainstream services often fail to provide.

Events & Socials

Mainstream culture has long treated our heritage as something to leave behind. We bring communities together to reclaim it, strengthening cohesion and surfacing the history and journeys of global majority communities, creating a platform where our culture and heritage are not tolerated, but seen, valued, and celebrated.

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What Guides Us

Our work is rooted in empowerment, equality, inclusion, wellbeing, education, and collective strength.

Everywoman

‘Everywoman’ is a documentary born out of Whisper Sisters, a local group set up by Zion Centre Community Outreach Worker Anna Akhtar to support women experiencing the menopause. Its aim is to raise awareness, expose the myths and help remove the stigma around this natural phase of women’s lives.

This revealing documentary voices the accounts of women and men of Manchester’s ethnically diverse community. Women who suffered in silence, women who have felt let down by the ‘system’, and women who just want to come out of the shadows. Their stories are as uplifting as they are tragic.

We hear from Manchester’s professional experts who dispel the myths and offer valuable advice and information on how hormonal changes affect menopausal women, and what women can do to support and manage the menopausal journey.

Produced by REELmcr in partnership with The Big Life Company. Funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.

EMPOWERMENT,
EQUALITY AND INCLUSION

Our aim is to help break cycles of deprivation for Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee women, while challenging barriers that prevent women from reaching their potential.

We strengthen women’s voice and influence so they can become ambassadors for other women and help change how women are viewed in communities and wider society.

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WOMEN’S VOICES
KEY DETAILS

15,000WOMEN IMPACTED
2013ESTABLISHED
50+RESEARCH FOCUS
06RESEARCHERS TRAINED
09KEY RECOMMENDATIONS
CICCOMMUNITY ORGANISATION
More than a hundred women holding yellow roses on the steps of a grand hall
Research report · Manchester

Uncertain Futures

Uncertain Futures is an art and research project exploring work for women over 50 in Manchester. 100 women were interviewed about access to work, life at work, retirement and the impact of Covid. 44 volunteer, 44 have significant caring responsibilities and 45 live with a long-term health condition or disability, while 41 have an occupational or private pension.

100Women over 50 interviewed
63%Black, Asian or minority ethnic
10Policy changes in the manifesto
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SUPPORTED BY AND WORKING WITH

Lloyds Bank FoundationNational Lottery Community FundManchester City Council
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Send an enquiry admin@womensvoices.org.uk