There was a different kind of energy in an upstairs room at Stamford Bridge after escaping the buzz of the match-going crowd before Arsenal’s 2-0 defeat of Chelsea in the Women’s Super League 10 days ago. There was a celebratory, empowering energy, but also a determined and hopeful vibe.

The room was full of people celebrating the third anniversary of Brown Girl Sport, the award-winning online platform and community that aims to highlight the stories of South Asian women and girls in sport in order, according to its website, “to smash stereotypes that Brown women don’t do, care or know about sport”.

Founded by the award-winning freelance journalist Miriam Walker-Khan, who was the first diversity and inclusion reporter for Sky Sports News after her time as a reporter for BBC Sport, Brown Girl Sport has gone from strength to strength and the evidence was in the room. There was no time or desire for nervousness. People took full advantage of being at a rare football occasion with friends who look like them and many allies before the panellists took to the stage.

“Brown Girl Sport is important because it gives girls from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to get involved in activities they may not have had access to in the past,” said Leytonstone FC’s Liberty, one of many young players in attendance. “History tells us that Brown girls have talent and sometimes this goes unnoticed. The majority of my football team are brown-skin girls. We are a talented group of girls that work together and include everyone.”

Walker-Khan was overwhelmed with the success of the event, hosted by the actor Ameet Chana, who played Jesminder’s best friend, Tony, in Bend It Like Beckham. There was a video message from the film’s director, Gurinder Chadha.

What Walker-Khan has created is beyond what she could have imagined. She fell into sports journalism, having grown up distrusting the mainstream western media because of the representation – and misrepresentation – of South Asian and Muslim communities in the UK and fought to tell stories that would make a difference.

Walker-Khan, who is British-Pakistani, was told over and over that those stories were too niche or not important enough. Her Bend It Like Beckham 20-year anniversary documentary for the BBC was produced and presented by her because there was little appetite for it, but it proved hugely popular. The BBC audiences team messaged her to say it had done really well with under-served audiences.

“That sums up my career: people not really getting what I’m doing and then it blows up because people want and need these stories,” Walker-Khan says. “There’s a treasure trove of these stories and they are stories of defiance and empowerment and it is such a privilege to be able to do that work.”

At Stamford Bridge came the next steps for the organisation that began as an Instagram account, with the announcement of a new supporters’ club for women of colour in partnership with Chelsea women and an ambassador programme launched. The Pakistan and Lewes footballer Layla Banaras, the Hampshire cricketer Naomi Dattani, the Para Lionesses player, England deaf national team player and Deaflympics bronze medallist Lucindha Lawson, Leicester’s Asmita Ale and the tennis player Eden Silva joined forces to pioneer the group.

The chair of the Arsenal Women Supporters Club, Farah Chowdhury, is one of those to have found support in Brown Girl Sport. “When you are in this space, everyone has their stories and their challenges. Since I connected with Mim we’ve gone at things together,” she says. “Even though I have an incredible supporters’ group around me that backs me, you can still feel very alone because you look around and don’t see people who look like you.

“My committee is all white, in fan forum meetings and other meetings around football fandom I’m often the only ethnic minority in the room. Mim’s my go-to for support when that gets hard and racist incidents, overt or not, arise.”

In such a prominent role, Chowdhury’s place is constantly questioned. “People have this idea of women’s football fans and what they should look like,” she says. “I’ve been around Arsenal since I was eight and I’m 32 now. I’ve grown up going to these games, men’s and women’s, but people still have to question my knowledge of football and my experience. I’m a book judged by its cover all the time.”

Brown Girl Sport has also given Chowdhury a platform to challenge racism and Islamophobia. She felt able to share a statement via the organisation after some influencers posted a racially insensitive video on social media that provoked huge anger and emotion. “I needed the community,” she says. “Those of us who spoke out were being told to give it a rest now. We were getting messages like: ‘You’ve spoken about it. You’ve made these girls cry. They’re apologising. These girls are getting death threats.’

“Meanwhile, we get death threats for just being alive, just existing in football. It was tough. It’s still tough. We’d been attacked, but we were told we had to be the bigger person.

“I don’t think people realise that you don’t have to be an outright racist to post racist material. If you are uneducated and ignorant when it comes to racism, you likely have no idea how or why a video like that would affect us.”

Chowdhury also expressed frustration that football organisations did not do more to speak out against the far-right, anti-immigrant riots that gripped Britain last year.

Chowdhury played football into her early teens, but stopped for a variety of reasons. “It was simple things like communal showers,” she says. “We’re not used to that and I’m not saying every Muslim girl is overly religious – I’m not – but I hadn’t been accustomed to getting changed in front of people. I didn’t grow up like that. It was all about modesty and privacy and it wasn’t as normal to me as it was to the white girls, who were perfectly comfortable just stripping and getting into the shower.

“I never used to shower at football, I used to come home and shower because I just found it a bit much. It’s like that at stadiums right up to elite level and these are small inclusive details that can be fixed so easily if they want to provide properly for different communities.”

Banaras has been posting about her hunt for halal meat in Lewes on Instagram, highlighting another potential problem for Muslim girls as they reach ages where they may need to travel or do overnight stays for games.

Brown Girl Sport is a place for those issues to be shared, cutting through the isolation many can feel as an underrepresented minority in sport. “It’s a genuine safe space and I don’t think that exists really in women’s football for women of colour,” says Walker Khan.

“To bring all the intersections of the community together was significant. Brown Girl Sport is for everyone who’s part of different South Asian communities and that’s unique.”

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