Community Integrated Care and One Voice Partner to Celebrate Muslim Festivals

EachStep Blackburn, our specialist dementia care home, and the leading Blackburn South Asian community group, One Voice, came together to celebrate Ramadan and Eid. These efforts are part of a pioneering partnership between our home and One Voice to ensure that the service is accessible to members of the South Asian community and to raise awareness of dementia issues.

EachStep Blackburn is a new £5m state-of-the-art dementia care service, and provides specialist dementia care to 64 people we support, and serves as a hub for the local community.

Ten people who work at EachStep Blackburn and at our head office took part in One Voice’s ‘I’m not a Muslim, but I will fast for one day campaign’. In doing so, our non-Muslim staff experienced an important moment in the lives of people we support and other colleagues, and showed our respect for this important festival.

This was followed when we worked with One Voice’s young people’s groups, WEG’s (West End Girls) and 2020 Vision, to create a festive Eid card. The young people worked with the our marketing team and the award-winning design agency, Carbon Creative, to develop the card which innovatively represented symbols of the religious festival. The card was sent directly to 8000 Muslim households in the borough, sharing the best wishes of our care home team to the community.

John Hughes, Head of Communications and Marketing for Community Integrated Care said: “Ramadan and Eid are special times for many people in Blackburn, so we were keen to partner with One Voice to share our best wishes with the Muslim community. Our Ramadan fast gave us great insight into the experiences of Muslim community members, and showed our respect for their faith and efforts. We also had a really positive response from the community for the Eid cards, and would like to thank One Voice and their talented young people for making this possible.”

Fatima Dhira, 17, Outreach Volunteer for One Voice and part of West End Girls group, said: “The Eid cards were a truly special gesture by EachStep Blackburn, and I feel very lucky to have been included in the design process. It was wonderful to see their staff and the people they support so passionate and enthusiastic about learning more about Eid and Ramadan! It was also great to see the adults consider the suggestions of the young people involved, and to take them on board.”

You can watch a short film where the young people involved share their thoughts on creating the card for their community and what it was like to work with a professional design agency: