Rita Patel is an award winning social entrepreneur and veteran community campaigner. She helped to set up the Belgrave Baheno project for young Asian women in the late 1970s She is a winner of the Beacon prize for England, awarded by charitable trust the Beacon Fellowship to those who have made exceptional contributions to society. Rita Patel is also founder of Operation Black Vote and the Peepul Centre, has been elected to serve the people of the Humberstone and Hamilton as Councillor on Leicester City Council with a clear majority of 2263 votes.
Over the past two decades Rita Patel has built organisations and institutions that have literally changed thousands upon thousands of lives. Rita along with a few women launched Belgrave Baheno an organisation that would campaign, in the main, for Asian women’s rights; first in Leicester, and then across the country, eventually spanning their scope to support women in India, Pakistan and Africa.
Not content with being a champion for women, Rita along with OBV Director Simon Woolley and former chair Lee Jasper set up Operation Black Vote. Her most ambitious project was to establish the Peepul Centre – a fifteen million pounds theatre, arts and cinema complex to celebrate Leicester’s cultural diversity.