Bonus Episode: Averil Pooten-Watan (Waltham Forest WIN)

In our bonus episodes, we speak to women from our Women's Interfaith Network (WIN) community to share their stories and give their own unique perspectives on keeping faith. 

In our fourth bonus episode, Averil Pooten-Watan from WIN’s Waltham Forest Group shares the personal story that inspires her work on Waltham Forest’s Borough of Sanctuary framework, how local communities mobilised in response to far-right extremism in Summer 2024 and what we can all do to make a difference in our own backyard. 

Read more about Averil's critical work making vaccines accessible to undocumented communities during the pandemic.
Watch Averil and fellow Waltham Forest WIN member Jasmine speak about their ethos.
Read Averil’s advent reflections as part of our Festival Diary series here and here.
Find out more about WIN's grassroots women's groups and our wide-ranging projects.

Find out more about the organisations mentioned in this episode:
City of Sanctuary UK
East London/Telco Citizens
Barts Health Charity

Keeping Faith: A How-To Guide is part of Women’s Interfaith Network's 2024 Keeping Faith Programme. Read more about the programme here and be the first to hear about upcoming events and ways to get involved by signing up to our newsletter. Views expressed on this podcast are the speaker’s own and may not reflect the views of Women’s Interfaith Network.

Hosted by Maeve Carlin

Produced by Maeve Carlin and Adam Brichto

Edited by Adam Brichto

Executive Produced by Lady Gilda Levy

Theme music composed by Jamie Payne

Logo and Artwork designed by Jasey Finesilver

Support from Tara Corry

Transcript

Maeve Carlin: Welcome to Keeping Faith, a how to guide, a new podcast from Women’s Interfaith Network exploring how women keep faith in ourselves, in each other, in a cause, or in religious faith so you can learn how to keep faith too.

I’m your host Maeve Carlin. And today, in our fourth bonus episode, we’re speaking to Averil Pooten-Watan, Co-Chair of our Waltham Forest WIN Group, and a key player behind Waltham Forest’s Borough of Sanctuary Scheme. In this episode, Averil reflects on what interfaith means to her, how her community kept faith together in the wake of far-right violence, and how her upbringing inspired her to be a voice for migrant communities who all too often are denied theirs. 

In each bonus episode, we’ll be speaking to women from our Women’s Interfaith Network community, sharing their stories and giving their own unique perspectives on keeping faith. We hope these bonus episodes will help unpack what this word interfaith, that you’ll hear so much throughout the series really means to us, what it looks like on the ground, and learn more about the women who make women’s interfaith network what it is. But for now, let’s jump into our conversation with Averil Pooten-Watan.

Maeve Carlin: Well, Averil, welcome to the podcast. 

Averil Pooten: Thank you.

Maeve Carlin: I know you're a woman who wears many hats, arguably the busiest woman in Waltham Forest. Can you give us a short introduction to who you are and the work you do in Waltham Forest? 

Averil Pooten: So as you mentioned, Maeve, I do wear multiple hats here in the borough. Um, I think maybe I'll start off with the, the hat that's closest to my heart right now, which is the, the work that I do with the church. So I'm a church warden at St. Barnabas Church. That role has enabled me to, um, be involved in lots of interfaith work throughout the years. Most recently with the Borough of Sanctuary work that we're working with the council with. I also wear another hat. I'm a care home manager of a local residential care home here in the borough. So we care for people with long term mental health needs. 

Maeve Carlin: Amazing. And can you sort of give a bit of a summary of what the Borough of Sanctuary is, what that involves? 

Averil Pooten: Yeah, so, the Borough of Sanctuary, the initiative to make Waltham Forest a Borough of Sanctuary, it was a, born out of a deep desire, I suppose, in welcoming everyone. I mean, Walthamstow is a place of welcome. It's it the name in itself is Um a place of welcome Walthamstow the meaning of that and the Borough of Sanctuary initiative is something from the City of Sanctuary where, we say, as a borough, through our statutory partners and through our community groups, that we are a place of sanctuary and welcome for everyone, migrants, anyone.

Maeve Carlin: It's so brilliant. And I didn't know that about the name of Walthamstow, that's so, that's so apt for every experience I've had in the borough, so many amazing community initiatives going on. Can you tell us a bit about your journey with interfaith work and how you got involved with WIN?

Averil Pooten: I guess my involvement with WIN has been for many, many years now. I came through an invitation from our church through, um, the Women's Interfaith Network, the chapter here in Waltham Forest, an invitation from Reverend Sue who is at St. Peter's in the forest. And she'd invited us from St. Barnabas, women from St. Barnabas to come and join the Interfaith Network. And I've been involved in the network ever since.

 It's really a, a fellowship of women, um, that come from different faiths and different backgrounds and some with no faith, um, that share friendship, really. And, it's almost, it's a friendship group. We all come with our different beliefs and our different faiths, but we come to celebrate those things. We come to celebrate the differences. We come to celebrate things that we have in common, we celebrate each other's festivals and then we do multi ones that we bring each other together.

So we've in the past, we've had walks, we've had interfaith walks in the borough, where we would travel to different places of worship. That has been incredibly successful. In most recent years, since the pandemic, we've moved away from walking across the borough, because we've done that quite a number of times in different parts, but we've chosen particular places of worship, to go visit and just share with each other, you know, faith, or most recently issues in climate, and we go there and we talk and we, we have discussions with each other during those, those kinds of walks.

It's really a friendship group, I would say, we're extended friendship, a sisterhood or friendship group that enjoys getting together over food, over an activity, over a festival, um, but it has big impact because it enables all of us to strengthen community bonds. And that's taken us to different places in the borough, and we've developed relationships with other groups in the borough because of that, because of this, this connection with each other, made relationships with the council um and other community groups in the borough. 

Maeve Carlin: Yeah, it's funny with everything you're saying is picking up on other conversations we've been having with other members from different groups. And this idea that friendship is this kind of spark that leads you to all these other ways of working, different connections, and that can actually be a kind of foundation for activism as well. And I know that your group is so involved with projects and, you know, you're all kind of doing your other work alongside WIN and coming together on issues like climate, like the Borough of Sanctuary. But it's that foundation in friendship that kind of kicks it all off. 

Averil Pooten: You know, people say to me, “you know, how different is interfaith work from any other”… you know, they're quite fascinated, people in church or people, you know, friends of mine who are abroad say “what is this, you know, what do you do with interfaith?” And the only way I can really describe is friendship. You know, that is what it's a connection with my friends who have shared different faith with me. But we bonded over this friendship over the years. It's no different from being a neighbour or being a friend to another we just acknowledge, we respect each other, we have come from different faith backgrounds or none. And that's the starting point where we come from. But you know up until now I've never really had, through my interfaith work, never encountered a tension where we've, you know, where we've butt heads on, on an issue of faith or politics. I mean, we, we, we desperately try to keep all of those things out of any of our events and activities. We just share, we celebrate all the things that we share in common. 

Maeve Carlin: But that's the thing, isn't it? When you have that common ground, when you come up against an issue, which might be painful, might be difficult, might bring up, you know, some really painful things, the friendship trumps it.

Averil Pooten: Absolutely. 

Maeve Carlin: We've touched on the Borough of Sanctuary already, and you were a driving force behind that initiative, and the borough was officially recognized by the national charity City of Sanctuary at the end of 2023. Can you tell us more about why this is something you felt called to get involved with?

Averil Pooten: So my involvement has been with migrants through the irregular, those with irregular status: undocumented migrants, some would say. So we support a large number of people with unsettled status. We've supported them through our church for many, many years. In fact, our church, St. Barnabas, has been a home of sanctuary for a lot of people who felt without status. So ththat's our background. That's our history. 

That's been something that's been very close to me personally. I mean, I was raised by my, my late aunt who, um, was undocumented herself. She lived 17 years in the UK, never able to have settled her status. She'd never been able to legally settle that status, but she'd raised us as kids. Um, and she died 17 years in the UK, never having settled that status. It's been a personal, um, I guess a personal, personal thing for me to, to, to be her voice because she'd never had one for all the time that she'd been here.

So that's why that, you know, uh, people with irregular status is really close to me and my working throughout the community and, you know, with, um, supporting our friends without status really reared its ugly head during the pandemic when the world was, you know, trying to struggle with this looming pandemic and trying to vaccinate.

So we were trying to vaccinate as many people as possible. My work in the care home was also trying to get as many people vaccinated as possible. But my personal side, I knew that there were people in our community that were not able to get vaccinated because they weren't registered with GPs, even though they're entitled to be registered with the GP. It stems from the fact that they feel, at that time that if they were to do, to come forward to the GP, they would be identified and then possibly deported.

So we had, we were supporting a large number of people in our church who were undocumented, had no access to primary care. And there was a massive national movement to get as many people vaccinated as possible. And at that time, if you pass my mind back, you had to have an NHS number to book the vaccine.

That's what I was doing as a care manager, trying to book all my staff, all my residents, and you needed this NHS number. And I remember that moment thinking, gosh, we have got so many people in our church that, the government's calling for everyone to be vaccinated, people want to be vaccinated, but they're afraid to come forward. Where do they go?

So it was through that kind of, um, our relationships through, so through the church, through Citizens UK and Barts Health, we were able to advocate really directly to Barts Health and say that “Look, you're talking about people coming forward from Black Asian and Minority backgrounds that needed to be vaccinated. I've got people here that want to be vaccinated, but they don't have NHS numbers. They don't have access to a GP”. And, you know, at the beginning health, health partners were like, “This is crazy. What do you mean people aren't with a GP? It doesn't make sense. They have to have a GP.” Well, and then you go and start delving a little bit further in telling them that. They recognize that. “Wow. Okay. Yeah. There are people that want the vaccine.”And we were able to deploy at that time six vaccine clinics over the period of that six months to get as many people without status vaccinated as possible in East London. 

I mean I tell that long story because that's the impetus for why the Borough Sanctuary was so important, why my work on the Borough Sanctuary was so important for me, was to give a voice to those who are with irregular status or undocumented who would never be able to advocate for themselves.

So my lens on coming into the Borough of Sanctuary and making sure that it was one that would welcome all was from that lens. But once we were already with the Borough Sanctuary and we started to work with the council, we had friends that we learned that were 400, 400 people in a local asylum hotel, that came in the end of 2022. Some had been there a little bit earlier than that. So the whole year of 2023, working through Borough Sanctuary was also supporting those families, those individuals that were living in a local asylum hotel close, very close to the church, St. Barnabas Church. So the whole of 2023 really was this, um, kind of holding hands and, you know, wrapping ourselves around our friends in those hotels. Leading to early on this year where they were forced out of the hotels um, when the government had that move to close all the asylum hotels and very quickly we had to support all those families and those individuals to get moved into dispersed accommodation.

We're happy to say that that action that we supported them with, and our work with the council meant ensured that those families weren't put displaced to places outside of London. Every, family every individual was put within a London borough postcode. Initially some reports had been sent that they would go as far as Middlesbrough, Devon, the initial notices that some of those families got. But then through lots of work with the council as the borough sanctuary and through community efforts, we were able to get those families to, to be relocated closer, closer to Waltham Forest, certainly within London anyway.

Maeve Carlin: This is something we've talked about, you and I a lot, because, adocating for people who are voiceless in that way. It's something that's, I know, close to both of our hearts, and you were making me cry at points. It's such a beautiful tribute to your late aunt as well, who sounds like she was a formidable person, What an amazing legacy you're giving her through your work now. Um, yeah, Averil stop it. 

Averil Pooten: I didn't expect to think about talking about my aunt at this point this morning. That's really the driving force on a lot of the work and also you know, I'm a Christian, you know, my faith drives me to move into action. Jesus calls me to love and to serve and I see the action, the service in, in this community work that we do in, in, in the work, speaking for others and just building relationships in the borough. 

Maeve Carlin: And the love of neighbour. They're our neighbours. They're right there. 

Averil Pooten: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

Maeve Carlin: Sometimes your neighbour lives in a contingency hotel or is undocumented and you have to work a little bit harder to find out how to support them, but they're still your neighbour. 

Averil Pooten: Absolutely. I think if more of us took just, we just took it down to the basics that our neighbours are in need, they need help. What would you do to a neighbuor that knocks on your door and says they need help, you know? Not so far removed. We're not so far removed from…we just work on those little things to make massive difference. 

Maeve Carlin: And so many of us learnt that through the pandemic. I mean, you know, the street WhatsApp groups and suddenly you find out there's a person three doors down for you that can't access the shops by themselves. And, you know, the mutual aid networks that were set up. We all learnt that, how powerful that can be. 

[00:15:01] Averil Pooten: Definitely. As things get harder, we need to keep holding on to those, those moments and to keep working hard to build those kinds of interactions and connections with our neighbours.

Maeve Carlin: Well, speaking of neighbours, and I don't want to make us cry again, but Waltham Forest has been through some really frightening times recently. When far right extremist riots across the UK led to threats of violence in the borough, and particularly against its migrant communities. I'm not going to ask you to recount how terrifying those weeks were. I'm sure our listeners can imagine that for themselves. 

Averil Pooten: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Maeve Carlin: But can you tell us about how you kept faith through that time as a community?

Averil Pooten: There was a massive outpouring of solidarity from community leaders. faith and non faith in Waltham Forest as soon as, and from, um, I must say from our, from our local council too, um, so it was a pincer kind of hybrid movement almost instantaneously when we first found out about this terrible, uh, notice that was going around from far right groups potentially pinpointing a location in Waltham Forest that was shared almost immediately. And I'm on many different WhatsApp community groups, and almost instantaneously that message had gone through and people were organizing immediately. Groups just said, “okay, what are we planning to do? let's have this planned.” 

There wasn't like a come to Jesus meeting where we all, “okay, we're going to do this.” There was one that was, that was spearheaded by the council. 

Maeve Carlin: Yes.

Averil Pooten: The council did call an emergency, almost like a Cobra meeting, with all, reached out to as many community leaders as possible, had the police involved, had all the kind of emergency services and all kind of, you know, officials there at that meeting to give some sort of reassurance, to give support, to give plans, create a plan together with community partners. I have to say that the police and the council were coordinated and said they have a plan. But with, you know, w no idea of how this would, what would happen it was, it was really working closely with community leaders. 

[00:17:38] Maeve Carlin: Who know what that looks like on the ground, of course. 

Averil Pooten: Exactly. Exactly. But in the WhatsApp groups, we could see lots of, you know, community leaders saying, “okay, we're going to be here at this point. We're going to be here at this point. If people don't feel safe to…” as a person of color myself, I didn't feel safe to make a decision, to go stand on a line. Um, I didn't feel safe to allow, you know, members of our church who were elderly and, you know, really, really worried about stepping out and moving that day, actually.

So my effort had been really to coordinate amongst the church members and those who were vulnerable. Are they safe? “Are you safe? Are you at home? Do you have everything you need?” That was kind of the coordinated effort. But knowing that my friends, our allies were out there, would be on that line. just lifted up, you know, so much the work, you know, the, the, the, the feeling and the empowerment that we had, that I had, certainly, that really did give a lot of strength and comfort for myself and core leaders in our church to continue to work behind the scenes to make sure that everyone within our, within our communities was safe and our neighbours were safe.

On the actual day the priest at my, another local church, um, Reverend Sarah Moss. She came to me, and we walked together to Faisal al Islam, our local mosque, and we stood with Saira, Iftikhar, Polly from Holy Trinity, other faith leaders, Paul from the synagogue, from the Jewish community, Kuhan from the temple, we all came and - while we didn't go to the actual epicenter of you know, the central of Walthamstow, where that was all over the news - we were at one of the locations, one of the mosques, the local mosques to stand with them.And I felt safer being with them there because we were on a main road and you could see things and you know, logistically, I just felt a little bit safer.

God, it was such a, it was a massive effort, a massive effort. Yeah, community effort.

Maeve Carlin: And a marathon of hyper vigilance, my goodness.

Averil Pooten: Yeah, yeah. High alert! Yeah, you just, I mean, the last time I felt that kind of high alert was pandemic. Being in the care home, and it's almost like this, this feeling of being under siege, where you, you just don't know what's gonna happen next, but you know you need to have everything, you know. barricaded, everything in place, or you know, all the supplies ready, but you still just, you know, this, this tinge of you just don't know what's going to happen, where, where people are going to be, you know, so yeah, this kind of state of high alert really.

Maeve Carlin: And yet in that moment, all those different faith leaders and community members standing together on a street to say, “not today, not here.”

Averil Pooten: Phenomenal. 

Maeve Carlin: There's something so beautiful and simple about that. 

Averil Pooten: It was phenomenal to see the outpouring of, of those, of the people that came and in my heart, knowing my community, knowing this is what would happen, knowing that people would not… would take a stand, knowing that people would not allow hate to come to this borough.

We knew that, we knew that in 2010 when, you know, People stood in that line and stopped EDL from coming in then. 2024 now, we've known that. But just to see it this summer where, where scenes had been so different, um, just days or weeks before, it was really a turning point and something that I think our nation needed to see and really needed to embrace.

Maeve Carlin: Yes, I think we all needed, uh, we needed that hope, didn't we, that actually a lot of people were feeling the same outrage and horror and also love and solidarity for their community. And grounding in that is a really special thing. And I'm crying again, but… 

Averil Pooten: It really is powerful, it's powerful. We are powerful as people when we come together. We are powerful when we stand in solidarity with each other. We really are. 

Maeve Carlin: Well that leads really naturally into my final question Averil, which is, what would you say to someone listening who perhaps doesn't feel that they can make a meaningful difference in their community, or doesn't even know where to start?

Averil Pooten: That's a lovely question. And it's so personable to everyone. I would say making a meaningful difference would be as simple as praying for somebody, as simple as, you know, looking out for your neighbour next door, as simple as having a kind word to say. Or not saying anything at all when something's really so obvious, or saying something with strength, because you know, it's right to speak out, you know. And it will vary to everyone's own personal degree or their own kind of capacity.

But I would say to anybody who, who wants to make a difference, make that difference. There's nothing stopping you, nothing stopping you but you. You can find that in the most simple things I've just mentioned, or you can go even further, you can go that step further. There is ways to volunteer with things that you care about, with places that you care about.

There are so many things right now in our community that need support. So many food banks all over, all over London, all over the country. There are group hubs that are coming up, warm space hubs that are appearing in different places: Salvation Army, community group centres. There are so many places where people need connection with somebody, and I'd say to anybody who, who's moved in that way to to connect with someone, do! Reach out to a volunteer in a group where you could just give an hour of your time, or you could do it on the phone. I know that there's lots of groups that are needing people to befriend people online on the phone. There's so many ways to be involved. Yeah. Find what works for you, find the thing that drives you, look into that and lean into that. 

Maeve Carlin: Thank you so much Averil, it's always a joy to talk to you, so thank you for making the time.

Averil Pooten: Thank you, Maeve, thank you. 

We hope you enjoyed our third bonus episode, learning more about the women behind the network. If you’re as moved as I was by Averil’s work in Waltham Forest, you can find some of the projects and organisations discussed, as well as others worth supporting, in the links in our show-notes, and get involved with cultivating a culture of sanctuary wherever you are. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of Keeping Faith: A How To Guide. Subscribe now on your podcast app to be the first to hear about our upcoming episodes, and please leave a review or share with a friend to help more people find us. To find out more about the podcast, the 2024 Keeping Faith Programme or to get involved with the Women’s Interfaith Network, you can follow the links in our episode notes or go to wominet.org.uk. Until next time, Keep Faith!

Keeping Faith: A How-To Guide was created by Women’s Interfaith Network. The podcast is co-produced by me, Maeve Carlin, and Adam Brichto. Our executive producer is Lady Gilda Levy. Theme music was composed by Jamie Payne and our logo was designed by Jasey Finesilver. Additional Support from Tara Corry.