THE Waltham Forest Asian Women’s Network (WAFWN) has relaunched as the Waltham Forest Women’s Network (WFWN) in a bid to boost inclusivity.

Founded about five years ago as a way to help Asian women to become more active in community life, the organisation now hopes to help all women across the borough.

Shireen Shaikh, 40, of Walthamstow, an executive support officer and foster carer, is an advisory member of the Waltham Forest Women’s Network.

She said: “Our audience is not only Asian women now. We’re trying to inspire women to go into public life and become councillors and school governors.

“People think it’s only for Asian women but we’re targetting all women.”

Under the new name, the group hope to bring women together and help them to realise untapped potential.

Mrs Shaikh said: “It was about reaching hard-to-reach women when we first started. We started doing local workshops and we had quite a few mothers coming in to our events.”

The WFWN then started encouraging students from colleges in the borough to get involved and began running fashion shows with local boutiques.

“We got the students to model for our fashion shows and we had two or three of them at the Asian centre,” Mrs Shaikh said.

And in the coming months, they plan to launch a website in order to reach out to more women in the borough, as the group is currently run by a core team of just a few people.

Sharon Hanooman, 48, of Leytonstone, is a charity director and is the vice chair of the WFWN.

She said: “We’ll be able to put women in touch with each other. If they want to organise things and share their skills they can manage the process through the website.”

She added that the WFWN has received £5,000 from Grassroots Grants, administered by O-regen in Waltham Forest.