Room For All - S2 E12 - Live at the 2025 Social Enterprise Festival - Shaheen from Ta'leem Consulting

Empowering Inclusion: Shaheen's Journey with Ta'leem Consulting

Welcome to Room for All at the 2025 Social Enterprise Festival hosted by the Social Enterprise Council of NSW and ACT (SECNA) at UTS. In this episode, we sit down with Shaheen, the founder of Ta'leem Consulting, a social enterprise dedicated to elevating marginalized voices through inclusive and equitable learning programs. Shaheen shares her personal journey, experiences, and the motivation behind her mission for social equity. We delve into the importance of trauma-informed practices, co-designing initiatives with diverse communities, and the practical tools Ta'leem is developing to foster inclusion. Join us for an inspiring conversation about creating systemic change in education and beyond.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
01:45 Shaheen's Background and Ta'leem Consulting
02:39 The Importance of Inclusion in Education
03:25 Starting Ta'leem Consulting and Its Impact
04:04 Personal Motivation and Social Equity
07:14 Co-Designing with Multicultural Communities
09:14 Trauma-Informed Practices
11:09 Future Vision for Ta'leem Consulting
13:40 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

https://www.taleemconsulting.com/about

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hajiras/

Transcript

Room for All Live at the Social Enterprise Festival 2025 - Shaheen of Ta'leem Consulting

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Andrea: [00:01:00] Shahin. Welcome to Room for All the live podcast experience today at the Social Enterprise Festival, the 2025 Social Enterprise Festival at UTS Organized by SECNA. You are our first guest today.

Welcome, welcome. Thank you. I'm 

excited. Very good. 

So Shaheen. So first thing to do is to just briefly introduce yourself and your organization, and in a sentence or two, tell us, um, everything you're about yourself.

Everything about myself in a couple of sentences. Yeah. In two sentences. That's totally easy. Like, I mean, challenge, we do that all the time. It's like [00:02:00] an elevator pitch. Okay. Um, so I am a learning designer and strategist and the founder of Ta'leem Consulting. Ta'leem Consulting is a social enterprise that, um.

Looks at elevating the voices of marginalized people. And we do that through creating accessible and equitable learning programs. So I mostly work with educators, training, um, organizations, um, universities, corporates to make sure that the learning that we design follows inclusive practices. So it works for everybody and not just a certain cohort of people.

Fantastic. You hand me out. Inclusion. We like the word inclusion. Yeah, we love the word inclusion. We're, I'm very big on that and especially. Um, in education, I think that it needs to happen. I am, I am completely with you. I think education is kind of that foundation. And a level that levels the playing field for everybody.

Mm. And so if we can get inclusion at education, right, and this is one of the reasons why I love working with [00:03:00] universities is because that's the space where That's right. If we get that right, it just makes things get them early. Right. Do we talk about early intervention and in everything we do? Yes.

Absolutely. I mean, well, we're in a pretty amazing university right now. Mm-hmm. So, oh yeah. State of the art. State of the art. How long? How long Hasim been operating for? A beautiful 15 months, right? Very early stages. How are you finding it? I'm absolutely loving it. So I've been doing my work inside organizations for about 13 years now, and so I really, really enjoy it.

But I think about a year or so ago, I decided that if I wanted to have the level of impact I wanted, I needed to get outside of working in single organizations. I went out with my consulting firm and yeah. And now you can work with everyone and now I can have greater impact because I'm working with all people.

Amazing. Fantastic. So I'm gonna jump on the question that you were meant to ask. Oh. Because otherwise, uh, the questions [00:04:00] have happened. I know. It happens a lot with us, honestly. Yes, yes. I steal his stuff all the time. Um, but so, Shahin, uh, what inspired you to personally get involved in what you do? What's the why?

There's a few different whys that I think have laddered up over time. I've always been interested and passionate about social equity, so I come from a middle class Indian family where I grew up, um, moved to Australia 16, 18 years ago, kind of still early in my identity, but always knew that. Education was a really important piece of it.

So my mom's an A teacher, dad's an engineer, and we are, I, I feel like I am where I am because we had the support and we had great education growing up. Hmm. And that's something that I'm passionate about, therefore being important for everybody to cultivate. So I've always been. You know, quite passionate about social equity.

About three years ago I started working with a disability [00:05:00] organization, um, higher Up. Oh yeah. We know them very well. We know them very, very well. Absolutely. Big fans of Higher Up, and so I was leading their l and D function and Oh, fantastic. Just working with people with disability and understanding kind of the, just how inaccessible things are.

And that's because we've designed them wrong. Yes. What can I do to make sure it then becomes available, accessible, equitable to everybody? And so I think those kind of two things coming together where I wanted to make a difference. And then seeing how inaccessible systems just allow people to not reach their full potential.

Making friends in the community, understanding how they work and the systemic barriers can just went like. We need to solve this, we need to do something about it. I am getting teary 'cause you're like speaking all my language. That's like, that's right. I am. We are fighting for systemic change every time.

And it's funny, the red tape that we endure, we put it. [00:06:00] It, it's been put in for years and years and years. All the red tape that we have to go through and we have to fire this in terms of approach, in terms of inclusion approach. Like we talk at Hotel Etico a lot about, we don't wanna just work on the supply side of, of skills, but we wanna work also on the demand side.

So we work on training our own people. Our own training is people with disability, young people with disability, and skill them up. In many ways, not just hospitality, but but also independent living skills. But then we also operate at the demand side, and we work with hotels around the country to train them on how to work.

And how to work better, be more capable of working with people with disabilities. So yeah, break down that barrier. Inclusion is I love that. Yes. I love great. So we're speaking the exact language as you. Yes. I'm very excited. You are our first guest. That's right. Expect a call from us after this. Yes, after this, absolutely.

Um, I'm gonna steal Andrea's question now because I mean, we're just. We're just going for it now. [00:07:00] Can you share a story that has really impacted, I know there's probably a lot of stories, but like one story that you like just inspires you and is, shows the impact that you create. Hard to choose. So yes, I was thinking about, um, something that I'm very passionate about is co-designing stuff.

Mm-hmm. With people that we are working with. And so, um, about the first six months of this year, I worked on a big project with another social enterprise down in Melbourne and was working with, um, can you name the social enterprise, um, lot agency. Okay. Okay. Um, I, that's just a little shout out. Yes. They do amazing work down in Melbourne.

Um, and so I was working with them to work with, uh, what a facility provider in Sydney. And, um, they're looking to kick off a new project and we're very keen on core designing that with the different [00:08:00] multilingual multicultural groups in Sydney because we know the cultural diversity is quite high. And so for, we did about, um.

Eight different multilingual cultural, uh, communities that we spoke with, heard their thoughts and did pure listening sessions, and then co-designed what that would look like for the organization and just the power. I think the learning for me in being in a room with the different cultures and understanding how to work with them.

Kind of throwing out my agenda and just having a conversation, but being present and listening to them listen, but then co-designing it. And the organization was great at saying, we will listen to what they say, and they did that. And I think that's where the power is, because I don't have the lived experience of a lot of different things.

Nobody else has the full lived in lived experience. And so how can we co-design it when we, for the people that we are working with, you know nothing about us. Yeah. F fantastic. [00:09:00] Fantastic. Yeah. So that was a huge project, but the impact that had is now, you know, for the next six years of strategy is going to be embedded from people who have a say.

And often these are people who don't have a say Yes. Yes. And so tell us, um, uh, why is trauma informed practice essential? For what you do. I, I'll start at the broader level. I think just the world in general currently has a low level trauma running through it. We are now seeing images on our phones every day that we should not be seeing as human beings.

We are carrying the weight of tra vicarious trauma from around the world. We are. Thinking about existential crises around, you know, climate change. And so there's like this low level trauma that everybody feels. So even if I'm running a corporate training program, I'm still conscious that there are people there who are, you know, the cost of living climate change, like all of these [00:10:00] things playing on their mind.

And so for me, that's essential at a base level. Then obviously the work that I do is with people who've not been heard, who potentially have had actual trauma, deep trauma. Yeah. Yeah. As part of their lives, and we know trauma sits in bodies. And there's, um, I'm gonna get nerdy on you, but go for it. For the most part, um, people work in that window of tolerance, what we call, but then it might be somebody's, one word, one sentence that triggers them.

And so I think it's deeply important for us, especially in this sector, when we are working with people who are vulnerable and are carrying that grief and trauma with them to know how to manage that. Yeah, absolutely. And how best to make sure that it doesn't even get to a point of being triggered. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah, I, I, I agree. I think we are, we probably have multiple generations of people that are traumatized at some level. Mm-hmm. Commonly, but then obviously there's, there's those that have experienced trauma more specifically [00:11:00] in their lives, in their childhood, in, in whatever experience I've gone through, which, yeah.

Uh, there we are starting to run our, yeah. So we've got about a few minutes left. So I want to ask you that, what does your organization, organization look like 2025 and beyond? We are already halfway through 2025, so yeah, beyond. Let's go beyond. I wanna make inclusion practic. Often we talk about equity and inclusion and accessibility in kind of these abstract terms.

And so what we've, what I'm starting to do is develop a tool that makes inclusion accessible and practical. And everything about Ta'leem for the next year or so is getting that tool out into the hands of people. So we. You know, compare what we are doing to make sure whether it's inclusive and e equitable or not.

Unbelievable. And you're still, you are still new 15 months I bet it's been a, and so yeah, look forward. If you could have a magic wand, what, [00:12:00] what could you make Ta'leem and the work that you do look like?

I, I think I just wanna, I, I just wanna have more impact. Mm-hmm. And that's always the biggest question on my mind is how can I have more impact? How can I reach more people? How can I reach a platform that's higher than where I am? Not for me or Ali, but for the cause? To be able to talk about these things.

Mm-hmm. And so that's really deeply important to, well, hopefully the Social Enterprise Festival. Yes. And room for all, uh, will, we'll share that message, play a little bit of a part in spread the best thing spread, spreading that message. Best thing about being a social enterprise is that. Everybody's here for a reason.

And I think the more that we collaborate with each other to get that message across, that's what I love so much about the social enterprise festival. So do I. It's unbelievable. I love this festival. So before we go on to the final question, just a little bit of a, a cheeky one, which, let's see what, what happens.

Question. Like if your [00:13:00] enterprise was a dish on a menu, what would that be and why? I don't. I dunno if I can think about a dish, but I would call it a buffet. Nice. You can walk in and choose what you want. Um, we are all on a different stage in our journey on inclusion and so I want Lene and my work to be really open to say you can walk in and choose choice what you like.

Uh, and choice is a big part of inclusive. Yes, absolutely. So yeah, it's, uh, you know, it's small dishes. Made for you that you can choose that. Tapas. Tapas. I love tapas. There you go. Very good answer. You can tell where food is like food. If that's one of our questions. So just to close, um, what's one thing that we haven't spoken about that you would like the audience to hear?

And then finally, where can people learn more about you and get involved? How you get involved with you get involved? Um, I guess the only thing that, um. That's also part of Ta'leem's work, which is not kind of [00:14:00] embedded in what I do, but is part of my philosophy is how do we get people, and this is how inclusivity works, is we don't focus purely on the black and the white.

How can we have more nuance? How can we have conversations where I'm able to hold. I hate it. I mean, I love to wear it sometimes 'cause it matches, but otherwise I hate black and white. We live in the gray. Our, our brand. We're all Yeah, but gray, like there is no black so on. Okay. And the nuance of being able to hold two ideas at the same time and being open to listening to other ideas and yes, it's, it's a lived experience.

I've not had but. What you've had is true. And so let me have a conversation with you. I think if we can start to build these conversations and come out of our silos and bubbles. Mm. That just goes so far. Yeah. And unfortunately today's world is so, um, um. Polarized. Polarized. That's right. And, and yeah, it will take a little bit [00:15:00] to, that's why we need someone like you, which is fantastic.

And so where do people find out about you, give, you know, links or contact details? So I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Love. Very good. They're my people. Um. So yes, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. And I also have Taleemconsulting.com. Fantastic. As my website for more, you know, if you wanna get in touch.

I'm always open to coffees and chats. Awesome. Um, especially with lovely social enterprise humans. And we'll put all these in the show notes, obviously, so we'll, we'll spread that, well your contact out there. We'll spread it. Oh, will And yes, we'll be calling you after this. This is, we normally talk for about.

50 minutes to hour, an hour in our podcast, but obviously today is a bit of a different format. So we'll wrap it up here. We really, really appreciate it. It was a great start, actually. That was an amazing start. Yes. Hard one to follow. I had a lot of fun. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Shaheen, and I hope you have a great day at the festival today.

So the day just started. So yes, welcome to Room for All. Thank you very much. Thank you. 

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