A charity you cannot ignore

Integrate Bristol is a charity which cannot be ignored. Its high-profile campaign against female genital mutilation (FGM) has made international headlines and has forced politicians to face up to the reality of what is happening to women behind closed doors.

Earlier this year Fahma Mohammed from Barton Hill met the Prime Minster at Number 10 Downing Street.

Representing Integrate Bristol she was invited to David Cameron’s  community engagement forum to discuss FGM, forced marriage and radicalisation.

Fahma Mohammed met UN leader Ban Ki-moon to talk about FGM

Exciting perhaps, but meeting David Cameron is unlikely to have phased a seasoned campaigner like Fahma. She has lobbied everyone from the head of the United Nations to film stars as she presses for female empowerment, equality and integration.

Fahma may have emerged as the figurehead of Integrate Bristol, following her game changing campaign about FGM education, but back at headquarters in Redfield there is a dedicated team of young volunteers going out to schools and organisations across the country, delivering workshops and seminars.

‘Fanny Defence League’ – one if the headline grabbing campaigns that City Academy pupils use to highlight FGM

Pupils at City Academy make up the bulk of the volunteers – and there are no shortage of recruits wanting to be involved.

On a recent Thursday afternoon they were busy organising Integrate Bristol’s annual conference. Experienced Year 11 campaigners mingle with nervous new members from Year 7. As they discuss the conference and what remains to be done, on hand with determined encouragement is project director and founder Lisa Zimmerman.   

 “I’d just started as a teacher here and I was going to take a group of 12 girls on a horse riding trip as a reward. I was taken aside and told that 11 had disclosed that they had FGM and I was so shocked,” she recalls.

Teacher Lisa Zimmerman started Integrate Bristol after a shocking revelation from children she taught 

“Of course, everyone thought it was so terrible but nothing was really being done. There weren’t any conversations around it and there weren’t any hard core policies in schools, there weren’t any education resources that people could use in schools and it sort of started from there.”

While the members of Integrate Bristol may now be feted by world leaders it wasn’t always the case.

“People were objecting to the fact that girls were discussing this issue which was considered taboo,” said Lisa.

“The year the girls wanted to make a film [Silent Scream] and wanted their names up there and their faces up there… there was the same kick-off but in the end we persevered and won.

“We call it the Battle of the Silent Scream and after that the numbers in the group jumped to 85.”

Always slightly standing to one side in photos and encouraging the young people to speak out for themselves, Lisa says she is incredibly proud of what the group has achieved.

Now with some many young people involved in the charity it is now a case of making sure that everyone has a role.

Some produce the music and films, others take a lead at the conferences and the older members who are over 18 go around the country training teachers and medical professionals, lawyers and judges about the issues surrounding FGM.

“It’s grown and grown and grown and it’s brilliant,” says Lisa.

“I don’t think I was really thinking in terms of success or size, I just felt that something needed to be done and it has always been the young people who lead the work and they decide what they want to do next.”

And so Integrate Bristol have just launched their latest educational campaigns.

They will be going into schools and delivering peer education around two more very difficult issues – grooming for child sexual exploitation and the grooming for radicalisation.

“It is ultimately a very, very difficult subject – it is about child abuse, it’s about violence towards women and girls, it’s about violations of human rights,” says Lisa. “Every which way, it’s a very difficult subject to talk about.”

The fight to get statutory education about FGM in schools still goes on but thanks to the work of the charity this once most taboo of subjects can no longer be ignored both in and out of schools.

“Even five years ago you wouldn’t have expected to be in a taxi and the driver to know about FGM,” says Lisa. “The difference in terms of awareness is just incredible and the more it is talked about the faster it will stop.”