Sufia has been dedicating her time to Tower Hamlets since 1997, starting with the Wapping Women’s centre, supporting the development of women from the Bangladeshi community and providing community cohesion on the estate.
She went on to found one of the first Organic community gardens on the Berner Estate in 1999 which brought the community together and encouraged women to leave their houses and engage in educational and recreational activities and programmes. This empowered them to go on to further education and into employment.
Sufia took on fundraising to sustain the women’s centre and some of her biggest achievements include securing funding to develop a nursery there and improving childcare and education by making it a sure start satellite hub, even though at that time she was on maternity leave herself.
She has actively worked with the council through the years. In 2007 she supported the council’s recycling scheme when she formed the Muslim women’s Collective. She encouraged the uptake of recycling and trained eco champions to deliver the message to the community. This improved recycling by 40 percent and as a result the council gave free swimming to the community.
She later supported women’s employment in the borough and set up a catering social enterprise where they brought the garden produce into the community centre. Local people far removed from the job market were employed to deliver a luncheon club for elderly women who were lonely and depressed, and arranged many trips to the seaside and outside the city to improve their mental health.
Sufia now works at the East London Mosque managing the Maryam centre and head of the programmes at the mosque, whilst continuing to engage with the council. She represents the mosque on Tower Hamlets No Place for Hate forum, Domestic Violence forum and the tension monitoring group.
She also chairs the shared life panel, volunteers time on the domestic homicide panel and is a steering group member for the Tower Hamlets Interfaith forum.
During the pandemic she has been instrumental in getting the safety message across to the community working with imams and other faith leaders. She has been a recognised partner with Barts health and steered discussions to get the vaccination centre and the London Muslim centre.
Sufia lives for her community and she likes to connect the community together welcoming all its diverse members. Her passion has been demonstrated in the creation of cultural diversity courses in the east london Mosque, encouraging more dialogue and understanding of faith and culture.
She is also an organiser for Citizens UK and has campaigned on local and National issues such
as living wage and Hate crime. Sufia has trained up 40 hate crime ambassadors in front line
community organisations so that women and other vulnerable victims of crime can report hate
crime confidently to someone they know and trust.

She is also passionate about mental health and trained as a counsellor. She over sees the flagship counselling service at the Maryam Centre.
She manages the first Muslim Archives at the East London Mosque and is passionate about preserving history.
Sufia’s drive and passion to support people and especially women makes her well known and loved in the borough. Sufia has this amazing ability to work across cultures and faiths and is fun loving and humble. She lives in Redbridge, but her heart is in Tower hamlets.
Presently Sufia is training women to become leaders through a project called Women 100 and she
is the Head of Programmes and Maryam Centre at the east London Mosque. Her voluntary work
still includes Leading the Muslim Women’s Collective and Kids Kingdom Nursery. Last year she
got a special thanks from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for her work on the food bank and
counselling during the pandemic.