YUMI
Back to Case studies“If I had not had Oasis I could never have done it. What Oasis enabled me to do was to take risks. I didn’t know if I could do it, but I was prepared to take the risk and had the courage to do it.”
Sasiki Hubberstey, Founder
YUMI
Sasiki Hubberstey has had what she calls “a long and intense association” with Oasis.
She undertook a diploma in Advanced Human Relations and Counselling between 1999 and 2002 and later completed the Leadership, Life and Learning programme.
With the support of one-to-one executive development, provided through the Oasis Foundation, Sasiki then set up York Unifying Multicultural Initiative (YUMI) in 2004.
“If I had not had Oasis I could never have done it. What Oasis enabled me to do was to take risks. I didn’t know if I could do it, but I was prepared to take the risk and had the courage to do it,” she said.
The process she went through helped Sasiki work out what she really wanted to do rather than what she thought she did – working out what would be fulfilling in the long term.
Setting up YUMI
She decided to set up YUMI in response to York’s changing demographics. Despite often being regarded as a “white monoculture”, the non-White British population in the city has doubled over the last 10 years with a BME community that encompasses a huge range of cultures and backgrounds – now with people from over 92 ethnic/national origins and 78 languages spoken in the city.
YUMI provides a voluntary support network and the chance to interact with people from different cultures, with different lifestyles and customs, through its range of projects and activities, bringing people from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups together with people who were born in York or see themselves as the settled community.
It works to develop people’s skills, supporting and mentoring them to get involved in its activities – such as its International Community Garden, Cooks project, volunteer training programmes, multicultural food and arts festival, and a range of arts projects – so that they can take active roles in the community, and thereby increase understanding and tolerance of difference and diversity across the city.
Social change through interculturalism
YUMI works for social change through its core principle of interculturalism –working with differences rather than ignoring them.
All of YUMI’s projects are intercultural: none works with people from one culture alone.
Participants on YUMI projects may themselves have to take risks in co-creating their projects, so YUMI supports their process of learning and interaction in whatever ways are necessary: through language support, individual mentoring and training.
This ‘process’ working underpins everything that YUMI does and is as important as the activities themselves.
A safe environment to take risks
The course facilitator at Oasis created a safe environment in which participants knew they would be supported as they took risks, allowing Sasiki to try out different ways of doing things, and receive feedback, in the context of working out what she wanted to do.
In turn, Sasiki has passed on this way of working to YUMI, enabling and empowering its members to work together to take on their own leadership roles in the community.
As a growing community network more and more people are getting on board and wanting to help run it along collaborative, participative lines.
The process is slower than a traditional hierarchical one, but it has benefits.
During the creation of the YUMI Community Garden, for example, everyone involved in the project has been involved in planning, negotiating, and decision making, which creates a strong sense of purpose, belonging and achievement.
Sasiki said: “I could not have set up this network if I hadn’t been involved with Oasis – I wouldn’t have felt that I could. I feel like it’s brought me more alive.
“I had more potential than I knew I had before I started working with Oasis. It gave me the feeling of steering my own ship for the first time in my life.”