Meet The Team

Shantona staff details

Nahid Rasool - Nahid is currently the director of Shantona Womens centre she has been managing the organisation for the past 13 years. Her drive and determination has steered the organisation in achieving accolades and various awards such as the prestigious Duke of York community initiative Award.

Through Nahid’s work she has met a lot of remarkable people: from community members to external organisation members to Shantona staff, Nahid ensures that she is a pro-active representative for the voicing the needs for the local people and issues affecting their lives. Nahid is a governor at the local primary school.

Nahid is highly committed, passionate to bring changes and improve race relation and reducing inequality in education, health and others. She is an active member in various strategic planning committees which includes representing VCFS in children Leeds leadership team for North East and East education Leeds Equality and diversity team, Family support sub group, BME strategy group, Community cohesion strategy group etc.

Her relentless effort, ambition, hard work, has definitely put Shantona on the map, as the one of the BME women organisation in Leeds, which is leading real changes in the lives of most vulnerable women, children and young people. 
 

Ashia Akhtar - is the Administrator/PA to Nahid she has been part of the team for 6 years. She provides a warm, welcoming environment she is the first point of contact for organisations and service users via the telephone and face to face, as well as providing the centre with administrative work.
 

Harpreet Dosanjh - is the finance and monitoring officer she has been part of the Shantona team for 12 years. Harpreet deals with PAYE, book-keeping, managing of bank accounts, providing yearly financial information for the auditor, collecting and evaluation of user information for monitoring purposes and information required by partner organisations.
 

Shafia B Ali - is the Family and Health Development worker. The purpose of her role is to raise the awareness of health issues and provide support to children (5-13) and their families and encourage them to become active in tackling health issues. Shafia co-ordinates and facilitates health initiatives in order to identify the needs of families and children and develop a long term health strategy to improve family health.
 

Fahima B Rahman - is part of a team of intensive family support workers based at Shantona who offer family support to families with children aged 8-13 years sub-contracted to us by Barnados. The intensive family support workers work with families who are affected by domestic violence, alcohol or substance misuse, poor parental mental/physical health and who have children with behavioural problems.
 

Husna Ullah – is the other member of the intensive family support team based in Shantona who offer family support to families with children aged 8-13 years. The intensive family support workers work with families who are affected by domestic violence, alcohol or substance misuse, poor parental mental/physical health and who have children with behavioural problems.
 

Shahina Swain - is the Connexions PA. Her role is to enable disadvantaged BME young people to participate effectively in appropriate learning opportunities. Shanina does this by raising their aspirations and self confidence, by removing barriers to learning (NEET) and by brokering access to a range of specialist services. This enables them to reach their full potential and engage them with the world of training and employment.
 

Tam Le - is the crèche leader at Shantona. Her job role is to prepare, support and train all crèche staff, sessional workers and volunteers to comply with Ofsted regulations and maintain all paper work required by the organisation. Tam is responsible for developing the stepping stone facilities, which are required for Bangladeshi children and their mothers, making sure all the networking connections are maintained to support the children services agenda and developing further services for Bangladeshi children.
 

Surinder Rall - is the Early Years Manager for Shantona Centres newly opened nursery provision.  The purpose of her role is management and development of all early years staff and ensuring and facilitating the participation of service users. She is responsible for recruiting and maintaining sufficient numbers of children for the outreach and partnership work, managing day to day activities, setting up sessions in-line with early years foundation stage curriculum and is responsible for planning and running an exciting range of play activities for children at the centre.
 

Preeti Tyagi - is the maternity outreach co-ordinator. The purpose of her role is to enable and support BME women to take a structured volunteering role around women’s health in general and particularly maternity matters. Disseminate culturally sensitive knowledge and information about antenatal care and services available with a view to encourage early antenatal booking. Train volunteers on how to pass basic information around specific topics such as pre-natal appointments pregnancy, maternity, breastfeeding, safe sleeping, smoking and domestic violence support. Support trained volunteers to achieve their own objectives and provide exposure to work experience to those seeking paid posts in future and to provide a suitable model to train migrant BME volunteers on a wider set of topics with clear benefits to themselves, their families and the city