Rooda Abdillahi

Rooda was born in Somalia in 1979 and moved to MK from Holland in 2014. She lives in Bletchley now. She was drawn to MK because she had family here; she also liked the green landscaping and the diversity of the population. She thought it would be a good place for her children to grow up in and it was somewhere she felt she could make a contribution to. She has a Masters in Bio-Medical Science and hoped to further her career by coming to MK, but after teaching her daughter English to SATs level in just 6 months she realised that she wanted to work in education and started a business supporting local young people from the Somali community academically. She is the Chair of the African Diaspora Foundation and started the annual African Diaspora Day in 2017 to celebrate its different dynamic cultures and encourage community cohesion and engagement. She wants to be a person who takes the best elements of their own cultural heritage and combines it with the best of the culture that they find themselves in, helping to transmit this philosophy of positivity and unity to the younger generations of MK residents across diverse cultural backgrounds.