Atiha Chaudry

Atiha Chaudry has been active in the VCSE and BAME sector for over 30 years in Manchester and before that in Newcastle upon Tyne. She has worked at local, regional, national and international levels as part of her voluntary work as well as her professional work in research and consultancy.

She has lead the GM Ethnic Communities Network (previously known as GM BAME Network) and MBME networks for over 15 years and developed a strong network of BAME lead community organisations. Through this work, the networks have provided a significant level of support , information and capacity building for a diverse network of groups across the sub-region. GM Ethnic Communities Network has been an active participant of the VCFSE Leadership Group and contributed to the development of the sector and to  policy and strategy development for the sector.

Atiha has served as a Trustee at GMCVO for over 6 years and supported a number of other charities and voluntary organisations. She was instrumental in developing a partnership with GMCVO over the pandemic which brought over £350k of funds from Comic Relief for emergency relief for the Global Majority community across GM.

More recently the focus has been on food poverty and she was lead the development of the partnership with FareShare in setting up the Rafiki Food Network with a focus on the culturally appropriate food availability for our diverse communities and is a member of the Manchester Food Board.

Atiha sits on the GM=Equalities Alliance (GM=EqAl) and promotes fairness and equality. Much of her time is spent in supporting small organisations to develop and access resources so that they can be effective in their work for their communities and neighbourhoods. As well as working at  the grassroots level she has served at Board level, most recently completing a 6 yr term at Manchester CCG /MHCC and currently sits as a NED on the GMMH NHS Trust Board.