SEAMP is a project launched by The Leicester Somali Education and Community Centre via support from the Community Cohesion Fund from Leicester City Council. SAEMP will serves a community of around 15,000 Somali people across the city. This is a relatively new community within the city and has grown rapidly over the last five years. Up to 90% of the Somali Community is registered on income support and unemployment levels are high.

Individuals within the community are disadvantaged primarily because of a lack of language support, thereby, limiting their opportunities to access education, learning, statutory and non-statutory services, job opportunities and even recreation.

This community is also dispersed across the city in Highfields, St Mathews, Narborough Road South Area and Beaumont Leys, with the dispersal presenting it’s own challenge in terms of access to statutory, non statutory services and community support. Correcting this information and access to services gap is important for Somali families and certainly for other new communities.

An effective Communications network like SAEMP, is critical to the successful integration of the Somali Community, into mainstream Leicester, thus allowing greater access to Education Services, Jobs, Commerce and other Support mechanisms and community networks. SAEMP will also connect the Somali community to all other Leicester communities in a manner that will allow those other communities to exchange information, learn about and interact with the Somali community, in a positive manner.

This in itself, we expect, will lead to greater acceptance and integration of the Somali community into the wider Leicester society, thus contributing positively to community cohesion. Within the Diversity of Leicester, SAEMP is geared to facilitiatte the improvement of relations among communities through accessible education and information, leading to greater unity and a positiveand respectable partnership within the wider.