It begins with coffee. Always coffee. When Abdirahim Hassan started Coffee Afrik on the Pembury Estate in 2018, he set up a table, brought a pot of Somali shaah, and waited. People came.
Eight years later, Coffee Afrik runs eight hubs across Hackney and Tower Hamlets, supports hundreds of young people every week, and has become a model studied by policymakers and practitioners across the country. But the coffee is still there.
Joy as a political act
"When I talk about joy as practice, I mean it literally," Hassan says. "We don't apologise for the chai. We don't apologise for the shared meals or the music. Joy is not a distraction from the work, joy is the work."
This philosophy runs through every programme Coffee Afrik delivers. The Youth Hub at the Attlee Centre in Brick Lane pairs enterprise sessions with football. The Women's Hubs combine advocacy with sewing circles. The harm reduction outreach brings hot food alongside naloxone.
Islamic values, community action
Coffee Afrik is explicit about its roots. The organisation draws on Islamic principles of community obligation, collective care, and the dignity of every person, not as a niche offering, but as a model others can learn from.
"We're told to be culturally competent," Hassan reflects. "But what does that actually mean? For us, it means designing services around people's actual lives, not around what services find convenient."
The Women's Hubs
The Hackney Sisters Hub became, in 2024, the first of Coffee Afrik's hubs to be fully devolved to community governance. The women who use it now run it. They set the agenda. They hold the budget.
"That was always the plan," says Simeera Hassan, Coffee Afrik's Capacity Building Lead. "The goal was never to run a women's hub forever. The goal was to build something the community could own."