After losing her dad at 19 and later seeing women struggle without support, Leicester’s Sadé Paul-Henry created Women Who Can, writes Hanzala Fayaz.
Sadé Paul-Henry had always known her dad fixed things. Cars. Maintenance. Contractors. The practical jobs around the house that often, quietly, fall to a man.
Then, when she was 19, her dad suddenly died. The jobs did not disappear. But the world around them changed.
Sadé, who lived in a household full of women, began to notice what happened when there was no man beside them in certain spaces. Car garages felt different. Dealing with contractors felt different. Trying not to be overcharged felt different.
“When he passed away and it was just all women, I realised that actually, it’s very different going into those environments when you don’t have a man there,” she says.
It was a painful lesson in grief, but also in knowledge. She had to learn how the world worked, especially in male-dominated spaces. She had to understand finance, cars, house moves, contractors and how to stand on her own feet.
“I think it made me grow up a lot quicker,” she says. “It made me be a lot more resilient and a lot more focused and ambitious.”
The experience now sits at the heart of Women Who Can, the Leicestershire charity Sadé founded to help young women become more confident, independent and prepared for adult life.
Sadé Paul-Henry, 29, is Leicester born and bred. She is the founder and chair of Women Who Can, which was officially registered as a charity in November 2023 and publicly launched with a gala event the following year.
She describes it as “a women empowerment charity that helps women to be more confident, more resilient and learn lots of practical skills to help them through life.”
But the idea did not begin with a business plan or a glossy slogan. It began with frustration.
Before setting up the charity, Sadé says she had a difficult experience while working at a university. She went on sick leave and, during that time, spoke to other women who felt similar things.
They wanted support. They wanted somewhere to go. But they did not feel that space existed.
“We weren’t really feeling supported,” she says. “We wanted to support others, and we just didn’t feel that there was an environment for that.”
So she decided to build one.
Women Who Can now supports women aged mainly between 18 and 35 across Leicester and Leicestershire. Many arrive struggling with low confidence, low self-esteem, isolation, or a need for personal and professional support.
Some need help with work. Some need community. Some need to try something new in a room where they will not be judged.
Sadé believes young people are often expected to understand adulthood before anyone has properly taught them how to live it.
“I’m a firm believer you don’t know what you don’t know,” she says. “If you’ve not had opportunities to make those connections or have certain bits of education, then you just won’t know.”
This is where the charity comes in.
Its work includes employability support, confidence-building, wellbeing activities, practical workshops and projects such as Thriving Beyond Fatherlessness, which supports women who do not have a dad in their lives.
For Sadé, that project is personal. Her own father’s death shaped the way she understood independence. But she is careful not to make the charity only about her own story.
A lot of the early ideas came from her own experiences, she says, bit over time the charity had grown from the experiences of other women too.
Its sessions are fully funded and free to attend. Sadé says that matters because no woman should feel priced out of support.
At a Woman Who Can session, the subject could be anything from letterpress printing to self-defence, fitness, finance or employability. But the feeling in the room is meant to be the same.
“You’ll see lots of laughter, lots of smiles, lots of connections,” she says. “You’d also feel a place of safety and warmth, and inclusion and encouragement and support.”
Food and drink are usually there too. So are facilitators and volunteers. But behind the friendly room is a serious aim: to give women skills they can carry into everyday life.
Sadé says practical skills and confidence are closely linked. Whether it is car maintenance, financial knowledge or self-defence, the point is not just learning the skill. It is knowing you have it if you ever need it.
“Being able to walk down the street knowing that you have the information that you need gives you a massive sense of confidence,” she says.
Safety is one of the biggest concerns she hears from women locally. Some do not feel safe in Leicester city centre. Others feel trapped in jobs they are unhappy with, unsure how to move forward at a time when work can feel hard to find.
The charity cannot solve everything. But it can give women somewhere to start.
Sadé remembers one woman who moves to Leicester from another country and, with support from another community member, applied for college. She is now studying and growing in confidence.
Another woman arrived quiet, inward and unsure of herself. She did not interact much. She had little self-belief.
Then things began to change. At the charity’s annual gala, she was on the dance floor all night. When new women joined from the community, she was one of the first to speak to them. She tried new skills. She told Sadé the charity had helped her personal life and made her a better mum.
“It’s like night and day,” Sadé says. Those moments keep her going.
Running a charity is not always easy. There is funding to find, insurance to pay, laws to follow and free sessions to protect. Sadé has had to learn much of it as she goes along.
But the emotional part works both ways.
Sometimes it is stressful. Sometimes it makes her cry because she can see how much people have grown.
“I personally know everybody by name,” she says. “I know their story, I know their background. I know why they’re here. I know what they want to get out of it, and I physically watch them improve every single session.”
Women Who Can has taught Sadé something too. She started a charity to help other people but says she was not always good at accepting help herself.
The women changed that. “They’ve taught me to accept help and to lean on others and to trust others,” she says.
For Sadé, the charity is more than an organisation. It is part of her life now. “It’s not just a charity, but it is a whole community,” says Sadé. “I couldn’t imagine life without Women Who Can.”
Her hopes are simple: to keep growing, keep helping women and keep building partnerships with businesses and organisations.
But the heart of it goes back to the same lesson she learned after losing her dad. You cannot change what happens to you. But you can decide what to do with it.
“I would say to my younger self that you’re very, very resilient,” said Sadé. “Keep going.”
