Lutfun Hussain

"Seeing the happy face of a child who has grown even a single marigold is something that money can't buy."

Responding to an advertisement in the Bangla newspaper was the start of Lutfun's involvement at Spitalfields City Farm. Inspired to grow traditional Bengali vegetables in Tower Hamlets led to the award winning Coriander Club as it is today. The Bengali community continue to seek Lutfun's advice on growing techniques and healthy living and her commitment to London Leaders is to build greater links with the community and external partners, to create a 'Spitalfields Green Quarter'.

To garden and grow your own vegetables is an important part of Bengali culture and the farm provides a space to cultivate traditional produce as a community.

Tower Hamlets has a large Bengali population and word of Lutfun's success in growing traditional vegetables quickly spread. In response Lutfun set up the Coriander Club in 2000, which not only provides the opportunity for women to grow organic vegetables for their family, but participate in health cooking classes. "The Club provides local Bangladeshi women with a space in which to exercise, socialise and grow traditional Bengali vegetables, and what they learn and grow; they bring home to their dinner tables."

The Coriander Club began to have a number of additional benefits: the cooking class and gardening were important in helping members feel less isolated; many of the women were homesick and scared but felt safe in the club, speaking Bangla, socialising and laughing together. "The Coriander Club is a small project but working with such a diverse group of people and seeing the positive benefits that working on the farm brings them, is incredibly rewarding."

Lutfun is the lynchpin of the Coriander Club - working to promote ethnic diversity, cultural exchange, inclusion, organic horticulture and healthy living in our society. The women of the Coriander Club are also members of the Women's Environment Network and their expertise has even been called on by Kew Gardens to advise about the cultural significance of several South Asian plants through their Plant Cultures Project.

This broad approach is mirrored in other projects run from Spitalfields City Farm where the overriding aim of all activities is to teach people where food comes from, provide skills training - such as animal care and horticulture, and provide a space for developing sustainable and healthy approaches to living. Lutfun and the team are particularly keen to see the farm develop as an education hub, a place for learning and the exchange of ideas. In particular the farm provides opportunities for disadvantaged people to develop life skills, and different programmes target the long-term unemployed, ex-offenders, young people with learning difficulties, and those with mental health issues.

My commitment
"Spitalfields City Farm provides an ideal space for creativity and a holistic approach to sustainability. As a London Leader I will work with the Coriander Club in creating a 'Spitalfields Green Quarter', taking the holistic aspirations of the City Farm out to the community. Working with more partners and sharing knowledge I will work to demonstrate and encourage inner city sustainable living."