Reihana

Today I was a guest at a celebration to mark 25 years of Mary Seacole House, a fantastic charity which provides support, advocacy, training and social activities with a particular focus on the mental health support needs of Liverpool's Black and Minority Ethnic communities. The organisation's origins lie in the determination of a group of women from Liverpool Black Sisters to ensure that people from their communities should have an alternative to mainstream mental health services which were, at the time, at worst routinely racist and at best spectacularly ill-informed about cultural diversity. Times have changed for the better in some ways since then but a LOT remains to be done and Mary Seacole House (named after the Black British/Jamaican nurse www.maryseacoleappeal.org.uk/about-mary-seacole who was a contemporary of Florence Nightingale's) is still a much-needed facility. To underline that, one of the most moving speeches at the celebration came from a woman who has used the service for the whole quarter century of its existence and who spoke very eloquently about what it means to her. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house.

Another of the headline speakers was Reihana Bashir, the organisation's Operation's Manager and more recently the acting CEO. Reihana's worked at MSH for 17 years or more and is someone I've been lucky enough to work in partnership with for several years now in one way or another. Like so many people in this sector, she's hard-working, dedicated, has a wry sense of humour and is a pleasure to spend time with. Doesn't she look glamorous?


I thought some Sammus might be appropriate http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-sammus-depression-nerdcore-20160620-snap-story.html