Women in Mosques Development Programme

The Women in Mosques Development Programme is designed to provide mosque-specific training and mentoring to a cohort of high-potential upcoming female leaders, to support them in becoming the female trustees, committee members and project officers of their local mosques.

Many of the women are already involved in their local mosque in some capacity and wish to raise their experience and skill level, or are involved in running community projects that are hosted at a mosque. For those who are not, by pairing the mentees on the programme with a mentor – who is an existing mosque committee member of trustee (male or female) – as well as via experienced mosque leaders delivering the training sessions, the programme aims to build organic networks and relationships to support mentees access more roles within the mosque sector. The alumni from the programme will be tracked and further help provided to aid their development and support them into these roles in future.

There is significant gender-bias in many mosques in the UK, resulting in the lack of space or participation of women in those mosque. This is a serious issue that is limiting the growth and development of Muslim communities in the UK, aside from being an injustice to female worshippers, compared to male worshippers who can access the services provided by those mosques more easily.

We believe the most effective way to ensure a mosque is accessible to women is to have women involved in the organisation’s management team or board. This programme aims to develop talented female leaders who can serve in these management roles effectively (and not just being placed on the management boards as a token/tick-box exercise), as well as making a strong public statement that a 100% male-only management board is not an acceptable status quo for a Muslim-led organisation, or indeed any organisation, that claims to serve the whole community.

The overall UK mosque sector is in urgent need of more training and professional development for mosque volunteers and staff, to support them in running their organisations more effectively. This is why the MCB hosts Our Mosques Our Future conferences , most recently on the theme #OurYouthOurFuture, as well as launching a beta Mosque Resource Portal in 2018, and we continue to support other initiatives by our member organisations that support the capacity building of mosques leaders and volunteers. As the lack of female participation in management is an acute problem, this programme prioritises the training and development of female leaders.