Media picking on Somali community wrongly has annoyed me, so I have wrote this draft article to My friends in the Media to publish to show the positiveness of our community. Good luck reading it:
Somali community contribution to the UK
Recently Somali community become an easy target for some mainstream medias, as they are newly arrived community compare to more established communities such as the Asia community. The first Somalis arrived in Britain, over a century ago, were economic migrants. Merchant seamen settled in cities with docks: Cardiff, Liverpool and London. As civil war shrunken Somalia in the 1990s, Somalis flocked to Britain as well as other countries such as Sweden, Holland, Denmark, USA, Canada and others.
Historically, Any new arrivals that flown from civil war, will find difficult to integrate new countries with different systems, laws and society norms. It is for sure any new communities will be disadvantage economically, politically and socially for some time and Somalis case is no different.
The south Asia communities arrived in the UK early 20st century with big numbers and it took them about 100 years to integrate into British system and society whether that is political representation or economical advancement especially employment.
Due to the nature of Somalia conflict, many Somalis had predicted Somalia civil war to end sooner than expected which created uncertainly of whether to invest in the UK or not, but now considering the length of the conflict, Somalis has been eager to integrate and make UK as important factor of their lives. And this is has been the case for the majority of Somali-British.
There are successes of the Somali-British that deserve to be highlighted, just to mention few which includes:
• Political representation
Today, there are many Somali councillors and upcoming candidate MPs within the next elections who are contesting for different political parties. Somalis had first Black Mayor in London Borough of Tawerhamlets 3 years ago (Ahmed Omar), two of the youngest councillors in the country, in London Borough of Camden and City of Bristol and there are more than 6 Somali councillors across the country more than other community’s counterparts.
• Somali Youth policing the streets of UK
Local council authorities prefer Somali families because they keep council houses and flats in standards that even surprise them. Usually, social housing areas are rife with anti-social behavior, nuisance and graffiti on every wall. The Somali families have turned some neighborhoods into pleasant places to live. Many Local Authorities recognized the strength and bravery of young Somali men where they intentionally placed into high crime neighborhoods such as Feltham, South Acton, Golf Links and Ivy Bridge Estate just to mention few. Somalis are usually known for not taking nuisance from anybody regardless and those Estates were deprived and Crime rates had shocked the Nation at some point, but today they are one of the Pleasants Estates to live in. As young Somali men rejected their neighborhoods to be violated by usual tugs and criminals.
• Mo Farah
It is undeniable to ignore the success made by super Mo Farah. It is a Somali origin with British spirit who has made all of the UK proud and made last year Olympics a memorable moment to remember by all British citizens for decades to come.
• Technologically driven community
Somalis regenerated high streets as they offered unique entrepreneurship skills where they introduced Internet cafe's to many neighborhoods in the country where 8 million of population of 60 million do not know how to access computer and internet.
• Areas of improvements
Somalis has many areas of improvements such as employment rate, being active politically, and School attainments and community cohesion. Although majority of Somali children, universities and college students gained remarkably and constantly improving School attainments and British-Somalis in fact work and are very active and contributed Country’s GDP by bringing well needed ventures and skills.
Somalis in the UK are proud British and have a great potential to make substantial success in their adopted country and It is unwise to pick and wrongly generalise hard working community that contributes to British society as much as any other communities.
Adam Matan
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