Naseema and her fellow paddlers are encouraging women from east London's less advantaged neighbourhoods to embrace water sports which have often felt inaccessible to ethnic minorities like them with stretched resources and limited leisure time. Instructor Naseema Begum says there is a "taboo" that prevents many Asian women and those wearing headscarves from taking part in water sports.
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00:00Thank you, this looks a lot better than it did yesterday.
00:05And then I'll try it.
00:18I'm just going to turn around.
00:30Hello doctor.
00:35Especially women within this community, we would never do this sort of thing.
00:41We would never try and do these activities on our own.
00:50It's like a taboo thing for a woman who maybe is covered or who's wearing a headscarf.
00:56Generally the Asian community don't think that it's for them.
01:00And we wanted to show them and others that it's open to everybody and anyone can take part in it.
01:07So I thought myself, wearing the veil, the dress, you can wear anything and go in the water.
01:14As long as you've got the right equipment on.
01:25The way I felt the enjoyment and the confidence that I've built from this,
01:34I want to pass it on to others and tell them that there's more to life.
01:39Like sometimes you have to push yourself, fight the fear and push yourself and then you see it's actually not scary at all.