I am Umer Khan. I was born in Pakistan, in a village called Lalgali, Hazara. I moved to Manchester with my family in 1984. I consider myself to be lucky and fortunate for all my blessings. From humble beginnings, I’ve faced challenges in my life that have taught me a lot. I’ve had to learn to be resilient and look inward for strength. My values and my faith have kept me going, and my experiences of inequality and intolerance have motivated me to work hard to make positive changes in my community and to learn how to lead.
I have made it my personal mission to tackle problems of hate and division in Greater Manchester by bringing communities together. I have led the ‘WeStandTogether’ campaign. I participate in a number of forums and support our diverse communities home and abroad. I attend many events, and I coach youth sports in the community. When I meet faith groups, and diverse community groups, they tell me they feel disempowered, beaten down by prejudice, fearful, and unsure of how to make things better. I hope I can make a contribution to changing this. I aim to inspire and empower community members to lead the way towards a more united and cohesive Greater Manchester.
I hope my work inspires people to reach out from their own bubble, their own daily lives, to see different ways of life and hear different points of view. You will always find that you have more in common with those people than differences.
Communities are much more powerful than they realise. Governments have a role to play in managing difference – but the real power to eradicate hate lies within the community. All faith institutions and civic organisations need to create safe spaces for people to meet and have conversations that overcome divides. All community leaders need to set an example and reach out to those who lead different lives, to demonstrate that we all share commonalities that can unite us.
Realising your power and your leadership role is important! Having this strong moral goal has helped me to be resilient through tough times, and it can help you too. I want to empower community leaders to take responsibility for this task. From experience, I know that this involves a lot of self awareness and investing in personal development – I want to help others to develop this too by sharing some of my reflections and lessons learned!
