What’s Your Favorite Corner?

In an unassuming office building on Coney Island Avenue, Bazah Roohi is doing more in one day than most people do all year. She’s a CPA who runs Bibi Jan, which provides tax and accounting services to about 2,000 clients, and she’s the president and founder of the American Council of Minority Women (ACMW), which aims to promote, protect, and help develop minority women in social, legal, educational, and economic sectors. On top of all that, she’s also a member of Community Board 14. Now entering the busy tax season, she’s also working on growing several segments of ACMW–particularly the food pantry, which provides assistance to an increasing number of struggling families in Brooklyn and Queens.

But she can’t do it alone, and she attracts a number of talented individuals to her team. Working with Bazah (pictured above in the center) is Rukhsana Liaqat (left) who is also pursuing a masters degree in accounting and was just named by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office as one of Brooklyn’s Extraordinary Women in 2012; and Rubina Aziz, who also leads a Quran study group in a space that recently opened a few blocks north on CIA.

Despite being in such a busy office, with people coming and going and phones ringing constantly, not all of the news comes to them. Sometimes they have to head to the corner of CIA and Foster Ave.

“If you really want to know what’s going on in the community, that’s the place you’ll hear it,” said Bazah, who added that Pakiza (1032 CIA) is where she goes for the best gossip, but Mithaas (in the other direction, at 1150 CIA) is where she finds the friendliest conversation.

If you’re able to donate non-perishable, vegetarian food items to ACMW, please bring them to their office at 1090 Coney Island Avenue, or call 347-865-2769 for more information.

What’s your favorite corner in Ditmas Park? All this week, we’ll be asking neighbors about theirs–please join in the comments and share yours.