Sian Penner is an experienced community development worker with a strong track record of supporting minority groups in disadvantaged neighbourhoods to articulate their needs and identify people powered solutions. She has contributed to the development of strategies and programmes for SRB and NDC programmes across the country including leading community development programmes, co-designing projects and interventions with local residents and facilitating learning and development for community partnership boards and other stakeholders. She has led on a number of behaviour change and social action programmes with communities, which have influenced local policy and service provision including organising residents on an estate in Finsbury Park who had expressed fear and concern about prostitution and curb crawling in the area, and working with the third sector in Hackney to challenge changes to the legal service commissioning processes. She has worked extensively with minority groups including most recently with women from Muslim communities, who have ESOL needs, and who have limited interaction with the wider community. She organised self-help groups with key influencers within the Muslim community who identified that they felt safe in the local primary schools environment and who then lobbied for ESOL classes and development courses to be delivered in children’s centres and local schools. The social and behavioural change that resulted has enabled the women to organise and develop a social enterprise producing Asian garments, which are marketed and sold in East London.
