Tassibee is a locally respected charity, originally founded in 1993 as a volunteer-led support group for isolated and socially excluded Pakistani women in Rotherham. Over the years, the centre has delivered a range of successful, innovative and capacity-building projects that focus on transforming the lives of British Muslim Asian women, by creating opportunities for women of all ages. Tassibee encourages improved health and wellbeing, using the social model of understanding and alleviating loneliness; this encourages different generations of women, such as young and elderly women, single mothers, widows and carers, to come together. The organisation won Project of the Year at Rotherham Community Achievement Awards in 2015 for making an outstanding contribution to people and communities in the city for over 25 years.

The centre works with first-generation migrants, including recently married women, and older dependants who have come to this country to join other family members. Our long-standing relationships with many partner organisations, alongside our religious and cultural credibility in the community, enable us to do this successfully. Tassibee also recognises that there are children living in second- and third-generation households with parents speaking no English.

Here I present excerpts of writing and reflections by three participants who regularly attended the Tassibee programmes: Nasim Bashir, Fazelat Begum and Mukhtar Begum. They detail the previous lives of the first generation of women who came to the UK from Pakistan in the 1960s. These women's writing reflects memories of life prior to arriving in the UK, at which point everything changed for them. The different cultural lifestyle in the UK was not something that the women could ever have imagined. They found it hard to adapt to the British weather, especially snow, the language, not having seen white people before, and the concept of education for all children, including girls. They experienced difficulties with accessing services, including health and dental services, and social support in terms of provision (available only if you had the skills to access it). Even the houses were a cultural shock, as those in Pakistan are more open, and to bathe you had to either use a tin bath or find a public bathing place.