Refugee Week – here it comes again! This year we’ve got ourselves involved in loads of stuff in Leicester and, halfway through the week, it looks as though it’s all gone really well.
We started a bit early, on 5 June to be precise, with our 4th annual international football tournament. It just grows and grows! Last year 20 teams competed. This year we had 22, including teams from Coventry and Derby. Azadi, a Kurdish team from Leicester, retained the trophy but everyone seemed to have a great time in the sunshine.
BBC East Midlands Today interviewed one of the refugee players and someone has even posted a report and a photo to one of the leading Iraqi Kurdish newspapers – which reported positively on the event.
Refugee Week proper has involved a good bit of food so far – which seems like a good idea to me. The Babies of the World Group, together with the Soroptimists, held a tea party at Leicester Town Hall, which was well attended and appeared to be very much to everyone’s TASTE!
As I write, clients are arriving for another food event in the office. It’s a good chance to talk to clients about something other than the challenges they are facing with their support or their asylum claims.
Our local independent cinema Phoenix Square has agreed to show a series of relevant films and last night the first one ‘Last Resort‘ was introduced by Amanda, our manager, and followed by a panel discussion with three wonderful refugee contributors who shed a lot of light on the experience of negotiating the British asylum system.
Tonight we’ll see ‘Moving to Mars’ and tomorrow night Ryan, a colleague from Liverpool, is introducing ‘Lilja4Ever’ and we’re hoping this might herald future constructive partnership working.
Actually, talking of film, I was fortunate to be able to get to our Exile on Celluloid event last week at the BFI. Lots of lovely people, including supporters and donors, came to the event and there was a lovely hubbub going on! Jahan, the Secret Millionaire, made the trip over from Cardiff especially for the evening and it was great to catch up with him again.
And that’s not all – we’ve also got several school events scheduled this week. Yesterday I addressed an audience of about 150 11-12 year olds in an assembly at a local school. They were all very well behaved – which was a relief – especially to a non-parent like me. Tomorrow it’s the turn of a similar number of 12-13 year olds – we’ll see how that goes! We also ran Navigating Safety, our refugee role play game, with a bunch of 6th form students and have another session tomorrow.
So, what a week! It’s been good so far and we’re not done yet. Mind you, there’s plenty to celebrate about refugees and I’m delighted to be a part of it.
Aidan Hallett, Leicester Refugee Action
Tags: Refugee Week
Posted by Aidan Hallet