refugee action blog

Sign up to hold your World Food Night here - we’ll send you everything you need to get started!

Back in 2011, our fundraising team started work on our first ever national event – World Food Night!  After months of hush-hush planning, preparation and recipe gathering, we’ve just launched a website to tell you all about the event and how you can get involved.

Refugee Action’s World Food Night will take place on Friday 24^th February, and people from all over the country can take part by hosting events for their family and friends.   The idea behind WFN is that by cooking a delicious meal on February 24^th for your nearest and dearest, you can help to support our work by asking your guests for a donation for their dinner.  When you sign up, we’ll send you everything you need to plan your night, from invitations and posters to a donation box.  We’ve also sourced some great international recipes from some of our staff, volunteers and clients, but you’re free to cook whatever you like!  What’s more, hosting an event is a great way to tell others about the difficulties often faced by people who seek sanctuary in the UK and how they can support them.  We’ll provide you with some great conversation topics on refugee issues, based on our myth-busting Refugee Awareness Project resources, to help you do this.

We’ve been very excited about WFN for a while, but we became even more so when celebrity chef and “dragon slaying” entrepreneur Levi Roots offered to help us spread the word.  We met him at his Battersea cafe, where he recorded a very special message for us (above) all about World Food Night and how everyone can get involved.  Naturally, it was recorded in between Levi serving delicious Caribbean cuisine to a long line of hungry customers!

Registration is now open for anyone who’d like to hold a World Food Night, so visit the event website now to learn more and sign up.  We’d love for there to be hundreds of events taking place all over the country, and we can’t wait to hear about yours!

You can follow all of the news about event and our preparations for February 24^th on the World Food Night website, on our Facebook page and on Twitter, using the hashtag #worldfoodnight.

Ethiopia, showing the Gambela region to the west, near the Sudanese border

Our very special New Year’s Day blog post comes to you all the way from Gambela, Ethiopia, where Refugee Action founder trustees Colin Hodgetts and Julia Meiklejohn are living. Colin and Julia spent Christmas at Pinyidu Refugee Camp, where around 20,000 Sudanese men, women and children have fled to escape violence in their neighbouring country. As we welcome in 2012, we felt it was the ideal time to share Colin’s reflections.

Christmas in Pinyidu

Julia and I have been invited to celebrate Christmas at the Anglican Church’s    Mission Centre in Pinyidu Refugee Camp, in the Gambela region of Ethiopia. To call Pinyidu a camp, however, raises the wrong sort of images. There is no perimeter fence and the only indication that we are approaching, or even entering it, is a thin UNHCR sign that records the annual growth in hectares from about sixty in 1994 to over twelve hundred today.

With us in the pick-up that I steer between potholes in the dirt track are Mintamir, our office manager, and the Rev. Isaac Pur, the Nuer Missioner who will interpret for me. In the back we have large sacks of second hand clothes and shoes, six benches and a desk. Also a very large quantity of sweets.

The area is wooded. A couple of young deer dart away from us. We pass tukuls with clay walls and grass roofs that look as if they have been here for ever. There is no doubt about which is the church compound. Outside it an all-age crowd bearing a bedsheet-sized banner greets us with a song. There is one narrow entrance in which the Y of a tree branch has been set so as to slow down exits and entrances. The smallest children squeeze underneath. In the office, built around two trees, one of them sprouting leaves through the roof, we are treated to the traditional washing of feet.

The two main groups in the camp are the Nuer, pastoralists, and the Anuak, more settled slash-and-burners, about 9,000 of the former and 11,000 of the latter, refugees from violence in Sudan. Everywhere we go we are surrounded by young people and kids, dressed in their best for Christmas. They have all been born in the camp. Our host, the Rev. Paul Pok, says they are a worry to the adults for they do not observe Nuer ways, by which I think he means that they do not respect their elders. Might it not be hard, I ask, to respect parents who are unable to have a meaningful occupation? Who cannot be role models? A novel chord seems to have been struck.

Cards are not sent. Presents are not exchanged. Christmas is celebrated with food and religious observances, at a time that is out of kilter with the Ethiopian Orthodox calendar that won’t keep the feast of the Nativity until January 8th.

At 3pm, when the sun is beginning to turn down the heat, we fall in behind the banner, four drums and three ranks of Mothers Union members in white dresses with dark blue sashes to march through the settlement. We cross the paths of three other church groups processing in the same way.

To us the food here may not be that special, but that is because we do not subsist on rations of flour, oil and sugar, distributed in larger quantities than necessary so that some can be traded in the town and vegetables bought. There is also fresh milk because UNHCR has given cows, and the masala chai we are offered is a treat for those have us who have to make do with the powdered stuff. We have made a large donation for the purchase of provisions. We are presented, over the two days, with substantial pieces of fried river fish, cracked wheat with soft cheese, and chicken. I am treated to the twin thighs of a cockerel that was nearly snatched by a dog as it awaited its fate by the fire. I wrestle with the muscle.

Christmas Eve, and the compound is packed with worshippers from several churches for a two-and-a-half hour service that ends at midnight. It includes a nativity play. When he discovers Mary is pregnant Joseph drags her at high speed three times round the ring. Her birthing cries are very realistic. There are no Wise Men. But the Massacre of the Innocents is acted out with energy.

All good Anglicans are required to take communion at Christmas, and in the afternoon Paul celebrates in his church. Most of the congregation does not require service books, nor hymn books for that matter. They were Christians before they left Sudan and their religion is one of the main things holding them together as they wait to return to Sudan. How long will that be? When the guns are off the streets. How long will that be? The Ethiopian government reckons about five years, though I recently financed a visit by one of our clergy to a site over the border where some of those who were moved to Matar from Tiergol might be escorted in the New Year.

We have experienced a Christmas very different from the one we would have had in a cold Hartland. I am struck by a common factor shared with our hosts. We are all of us strangers in a foreign land.

Colin Hodgetts

28/12/11

N.B. Pinyidu is also variously spelt Pinyido or Pinyudo.

Today is Refugee Action’s 30^th birthday.  I hope you’ve enjoyed celebrating with us in recent weeks. Our 30^th birthday blogs have taken us on a whistle-stop tour of Refugee Action through the 80s, 90s and 00s, and the reflections and positivity of our staff and volunteers during that time has been humbling for me to read. These memories show above all how well we adapt to whatever comes our way. We may have been short of money at times, but our staff and volunteers have never been short of dedication to their cause, that of helping refugees to build new lives.

Our birthday is also a great time to say thank you to our supporters, and some of our staff have been calling them in recent weeks to express our thanks. Our supporters not only donate money to directly help us deliver services, they spread the word about refugees, hold inspiring fundraising events, add a public voice to our campaigns and welcome refugees in their own neighbourhoods. Without them, getting on with our jobs and delivering on our vision might feel very lonely indeed.

Though we have changed, adapted and grown so much in the last 30 years, I know if we could choose one birthday present in would be the same today as it would have been back in 1981- a society in which refugees are welcome, respected and safe and in which they can realise their full potential.  I hope you will continue to stand up for refugees and asylum seekers with us throughout the next 30 years.

- Dave Garratt, Chief Executive

In the third of our Birthday Blogs, Media Officer Julia Ravenscroft looks back at media perceptions of asylum in the 2000s.  It was a difficult time for asylum seekers and those who worked with them, but are things any better today?

Ah, the noughties. It was the decade that began with 9/11 and the War on Terror, and ended with the global financial crisis. It was the era in which Internet use and social networking exploded across the globe.  It was also the decade that brought us the first African-American president.

For Refugee Action the noughties presented lots of opportunities to support people seeking asylum, but it also presented us with huge challenges.  Not least of these was the increase in hostile public opinion as asylum seekers were demonised in sections of the media.  Suddenly it seemed barely a day went by without yet another headline screaming about the ‘scroungers’, ‘bogus asylum seekers’ and ‘illegal refugees’ teeming over our borders, taking our jobs, houses and benefits.

In the case of mass negative asylum coverage, many partially blamed Government actions at the turn of the decade.  Asylum seekers were now dispersed away from London and into communities across the country, who felt they had little information about who they were and why they were there. It didn’t make a difference that asylum seekers had no choice about where they lived; the fact was they were arriving in towns and cities, and some people did not know why.  The media picked up on this concern as any newspaper or broadcaster would, but asylum seekers and the people who worked with them were not prepared for the resulting deluge of ill-informed attacks.  These spread far beyond the immediate communities where they were now living, and the term ‘asylum seeker’ quickly became one of abuse.

It’s impossible to write about this issue without remembering some of the worst excesses.  As Roy Greenslade said in Seeking Scapegoats: The coverage of asylum in the UK press (IPPR Working Paper, 2005): “For the last four years there has been an identifiable competition between certain papers to see which can attract the greatest number of readers by publishing the most hostile stories, features and opinions about asylum-seekers and refugees. This distasteful contest has been most obvious at the Daily Mail, Daily Express and The Sun.” In one study in 2003, the Daily Express was shown to have run 22 front-page stories about asylum-seekers and refugees in a 31-day period.

Some of the most preposterous headlines included ‘Plot to Kill Blair’ courtesy of the Daily Express, in which two Lithuanian men had been found a mile away from the Prime Minister’s home.  This story was subsequently strongly contradicted by the police.  There was also the even more infamous Sun headline which shocked the nation: ‘SWAN BAKE: Asylum seekers steal the Queen’s birds for barbecues.’  However, it was the drip-feed of stories that repeatedly asserted asylum seekers were getting the best houses, receiving lots of benefits, were liars and were working the system that cranked up the most hostility and anger towards them. An Ipsos MORI survey, commissioned in 2002 by Refugee Action and other charities on behalf of the Refugee Week partnership, revealed the public estimated that Britain hosted nearly a quarter (23%) of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers – the real number was less than 2%.

Refugee Action had a responsibility to respond to this.  One of the problems was that asylum seekers and refugees did not have a human face or a voice. They were lumped together under a legal term. We placed their voices at the centre of our media strategies and ensured we spoke out to present the facts.  We also attempted to address issues arising between British communities and asylum seekers who had been dispersed into them.  In the Derwent Estate, Derby, Refugee Action launched a support project in partnership with New Deal for Communities. It supported the Derwent Zambezi Association, a refugee community organisation formed by asylum seekers, refugees and African-Caribbean residents in the area, which attracted a diverse membership including British-born local residents.

In 2005, Refugee Action set up the Refugee Awareness Project (RAP) in Nottingham, Liverpool and Bristol, in which British and refugee volunteers visited statutory and community groups to speak with them about refugee issues and the asylum system and tell their own stories.  Refugee Action is also a major partner on the Refugee Week partnership, and the ‘noughties’ saw the direction of the week steer towards celebrating the contribution of refugees and asylum seekers to the UK.  As the decade drew to a close, Refugee Week introduced the Simple Acts campaign, encouraging people to take up one or more ‘simple acts’ to welcome or learn more about refugees. To date, more than 27,000 acts have been registered on the website.

As we move into the next decade, we have seen a fall in the number of scaremongering asylum stories as numbers of people seeking asylum has decreased and the focus switched to Eastern European arrivals.  However, no-one is complacent.  Just this week a study carried out by Oxford University into Britain’s concerns about immigration shows more than half want to see a fall in the number of asylum seekers coming to the UK, even though they make up just 4% of migrants. (Thinking behind the numbers, The Migration Observatory, Oxford University, October 2011).  With this in mind, Refugee Action is determined to continue to fight for the rights of asylum seekers, challenge negative perceptions and present the facts just as they are.

Vietnam, Bosnia, Kosovo, Medevac, the Women’s Project… So much went on for Refugee Action in the 1990s it can be hard to know where to start. To find out more, we spoke to some former (and one current) Refugee Action staff about their 90s projects…

Jack Shieh OBE – Former Director of Refugee Action

Jack Shieh OBE was Director of Refugee Action at the height of the Vietnamese Programme.  The early nineties were a busy time for RA, as we’d just been asked to work with the second wave of Vietnamese refugee arrivals (in 1989).  We were also running special projects in support of refugee communities.  One such project was a scheme to resettle young Vietnamese refugees, many of whom had experienced trauma and personal problems, from refugee camps in Hong Kong to the UK.

Another of Refugee Action’s successes in the 90s was the “Counselling Project”, set up in response to concerns about refugee well-being in camps in Malaysia.  Refugee Action raised the funds for a social worker to be based at the camps, running a project that involved the whole camp community in supporting its most vulnerable residents.

In 1999, we set up our first Vietnamese Oral History project.  Responding to a concern within the Vietnamese community that their stories and culture would be lost due to the upheaval of leaving their country, the project gave a fantastic insight into the experiences of refugees in the UK.  It eventually led to a national oral history project – “Every Tree Has Its Roots”.  You can read some excerpts from the larger project here.

“The best thing about working at Refugee Action during the nineties was our commitment to recruiting and training those from refugee backgrounds to support others in a similar position, “ says Jack.  “Refugee Action often worked in new and ground-breaking ways, and the expertise we built up working with the Vietnamese community continued to help us as we began to work with those from other backgrounds”.

Richard Malfait – Former manager of the Bosnian “Medevac” project and Refugee Action’s projects with the UK Kosovan resettlement programme

Richard’s first role at Refugee Action was managing the Bosnian medical evacuee programme in 1995.  This programme supported twenty medical evacuees – most of them children – who had either been injured in the conflict or who could not access treatment for serious illnesses at home.   “It was a difficult and emotive project to work on,” says Richard.  “Children could only come over with one parent, so a large part of our role was negotiating with the Government to allow other parents and siblings to stay with them”.

At this time, Refugee Action was using its Derby reception centre, established for the Vietnamese programme, to work with Bosnian refugees.  After helping to wind down the Bosnian Programme in the late 90s, Richard came back to Refugee Action and helped set up our first Voluntary Return programme, offering impartial advice and support to those considering a return to their home countries.

In 1999, the conflict in Kosovo prompted the Government to ask Refugee Action, the Refugee Council and the Red Cross to prepare reception centres for Kosovan refugees.  Richard was seconded as Kosovan Programme Director for Refugee Action, and recalls working to a very tight time-scale. “In three weeks, we’d set up a reception centre and a medical evacuee programme,” he told us.  “We found the building – an old school – equipped it and staffed it in that time, because the first group of evacuees were on their way”.  Three weeks later, 50 evacuees were living at the centre.

One of the biggest problems at the time was finding Albanian speakers to meet and help support new arrivals at the airport.  “We and the Refugee Council put an advert in the Guardian – it basically read ‘Do you speak Albanian?’” says Richard.  “It had around 100 responses.  Shortly afterwards, twenty volunteers accompanied and supervised by RA staff were off to the East Midlands to meet the first group of arrivals”.  The rate of arrivals escalated very quickly, with the same number of refugees arriving in one year of the programme as had arrived during the whole of the Bosnian programme. In 2000, RA was asked by the government and refugee sector partners to set up ‘Oda’ -  a one year national voluntary return advice and support project to help Kosovans plan for and return to their homes.

Richard remembers feeling very impressed by how the whole of Refugee Action got involved in supporting the newly arrived Bosnian and Kosovan refugees.  “It was a big adjustment at the time, but everyone worked together to make it happen,” he says. “ It was great to work on these projects because of the support Refugee Action gave to the new arrivals – they arrived with nothing, but we gave them something by treating them with compassion and respect from the moment they arrived”.

Lul Mohamed, Women’s Development Worker

Lul Mohammed still works for Refugee Action (in a different role) today, but back in 1995 she’d just started as Women’s Development Worker.  This new post had been set up because of concerns refugee women’s needs weren’t being met or understood.  “It was an exciting time to work for Refugee Action,” Lul says.  “The nineties were the point when our community development work, and especially our women’s work, really took off.”  The community development team during the 90s was very small, but Lul says they were very close and built strong partnerships with the refugee women they supported.

At the time Lul started at Refugee Action, refugee community organisations tended to be male-orientated.   More often than not, they were led by male community figures and did not give much special attention to issues affecting refugee women.  “Our work not only raised awareness of women’s issues,” says Lul, “it also brought women together, helped them to become more aware of their rights, and empowered them to support others in the same position as them.  We also worked with the men in refugee communities, enabling them to better address women’s issues in their own work.”

One important concern for refugee women was health, and particularly the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM).  “At the time, there was a lot of negative press coverage about FGM,” explains Lul.  “As a result, communities and especially women felt victimised and judged, and refused to engage with health workers about the issue.  We worked to build  partnerships between communities, health workers and religious groups, looking at the dangers of the issue directly with the women involved to avoid conflict and negativity.  We also worked on parent and child relationships in refugee families, women’s fears about detention and deportation, and women’s well-being.”

Lul worked with women’s groups all around the UK, from a South Sudanese Women’s Group in Leeds to a Somali Women’s Group in Bristol.  As women’s development was still a relatively new area for Refugee Action, she feels that the work she and her colleagues did at grass roots level really helped to develop the agency’s national policy on women’s work.  Another success was the annual Women’s Conference, which brought together women from refugee community groups, NGOs, local government and other agencies to discuss women’s needs and how best to meet them.  “We tried to widen the horizon for refugee women, encouraging them to take on a higher profile role to benefit them and their communities,” says Lul.  “It’s interesting to see how many of the issues we worked on them are still affecting women today.  With community development work increasingly due to lack of funding, it would be very sad to lose all of this rich work.”

Did you work with Refugee Action in the 1990s?  Add your own story in the comments below…

This month it’s Refugee Action’s 30th birthday, and two of the people who were there at the very beginning were our founder trustees Colin Hodgett and Julia Meiklejohn.

Now living and working in Gambella, Ethiopia, they sent us this birthday message for our staff conference back in July.  As our birthday approaches, we’d like to share it with you!  As we think back to the 1980s and how Refugee Action began, here’s their insight into our very earliest days…

To see more photos from our projects in the 80s, and to find out what some of our colleagues were up to back in 1981, check out our Facebook page.

Here at Refugee Action, we’ve recently been raising money for one of our most innovative projects – our Wellbeing Project in Manchester.  Our campaign got off to a flying start last week, when a group of our supporters raised more than £2000 with a fundraising night in Altrincham.  But just what is the Wellbeing Project, and why is everyone so keen to support it?

Jenny Loudon, a Development Worker on the project, says that its appeal stems from its creative and client-focused approach.  “The Wellbeing Project is able to plug the gaps between other services, such as Refugee Action’s One Stop Shop advice service and other local projects, because its aim is to look after people’s wellbeing in the broadest sense,” she says.  “This means that things which fall outside the normal remit of advice services – things like a refugee feeling anxious or alone, a person struggling with destitution, or an individual feeling nervous about accessing services – can all be addressed by the Wellbeing team.  The people who attend the project can be refugees or asylum seekers, but we don’t usually ask them to talk about their situation.  Instead, the project aims to empower them as individuals, helping them to feel more confident and in control of their lives”.

The Wellbeing Project runs a huge range of activities for its attendees.  Amunah, who’s been volunteering with the project since 2010, says she’s taken part in cycling, swimming, team games like basketball and football, and cookery.  Sessions are planned for both adults and youngsters, accommodating an age range of 6 months to 70 years.  Amunah recently took part in a cookery competition, and says, “It was an event that brought people from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds together, and everyone was happy and enjoying themselves”.  Some sessions have more than 70 participants, often from upwards of twenty different nationalities.  “Many of the clients comment on how long it’s been since they last played a particular sport or felt able to socialise safely with friends,” comments Jenny.  “The project gives them the chance to experience these things despite facing difficulties elsewhere in their lives.”

Also within the remit of the Wellbeing Project is emotional and personal support, provided by trained local volunteers.  The team offer a programme one-to-one support to vulnerable clients – helping them to access services in their local area of Manchester, accompanying them if they are feeling anxious about going to report, meeting them for coffee if they are feeling low, or helping them to prepare emotionally for what might happen in they are taken into detention.  Health advocacy is another key area, with volunteers often going on hospital or GP visits with clients, helping clients to make appointments or respond to health service letters, and liaising with GPs in the area to inform them about the specific issues facing refugees and asylum seekers.

The Wellbeing team also help in more practical ways, such as organising donations of clothes or baby items.  “One lady we worked with had a painful eye condition, and was wearing a pair of damaged sunglasses” says Jenny.  “After she came to the project, the Wellbeing team asked around their networks and a new pair of sunglasses was quickly donated”.  A current appeal is on the lookout for warm winter coats, and wet weather clothes for refugees volunteering on outdoor projects, such a community garden scheme.  Volunteering is big part of the project, as the team often help clients to find voluntary opportunities in their local area by offering assistance with research, applications and references.  Attendees can also volunteer within the Wellbeing Project itself, and the team strive to find entry-level positions that are appropriate to individual needs, helping people to become more involved at their own pace.

One of the project’s biggest successes is its bike recycling scheme, which collects second-hand or discarded bikes and gives them to a group of local partners to fix.  The bikes are then donated to local refugees and asylum seekers, giving them a cost-free means of travelling to appointments and a fun way to exercise and explore the city.  Groups of clients are taught cycling proficiency to enable them to get the most out of the donated bikes.  The bikes create real positive change in their owner’s lives; “I love my bike, I want to name it. My bike is with me, when I need it, it’s there. It’s better than a friend- it’s always available!” said one recipient.  Another added, “The bike gives me independence – I don’t have to worry about money for a bus ticket and it also improves my health.  When I feel stressed I get my bike and I go out and explore local areas that I haven’t been to before.  I just get lost, it’s great stress relief!”.

There’s much more that we could say about the Wellbeing Project, and we’ll be posting some more updates from the project on our Facebook page and Twitter over the next week.  It’s a project that we are very passionate about, so if you’d like to know more about it please feel free to ask!  To give your support to the project, you can make a donation today – visit our Latest Appeal page to find out more.