OUR PROGRAMMES
We are empowering refugees and asylum seekers to support their communities
OUR PROGRAMMES
We are empowering refugees and asylum seekers to support their communities
We are empowering refugees and asylum seekers to support their communities
Are you a refugee or an asylum seeker living in the North East region with an idea to help your community?
Does your community look to you for information, support and advice? Do you want to organise a weekly meeting for your community? a homework club for children? an outing for families? Are you unsure how systems work in the UK? Or how to help people solve problems with their housing or support? Do you want to make sure people who design policies or deliver local services can hear what is happening in your community?
Do you want support to do all this? We want to help you turn your ideas into action.
In the last 3 years we have supported over 100 refugee and asylum seeker community mobilisers, activists and advocates to organise support for their communities, increase their advocacy skills, build community organisations and widen their networks of influence and support.
Join in our activities designed to help you turn your ideas into action. Click on the links below to find out more.
Members meeting with Mears to discuss asylum accommodation and support
Each meeting focuses on an issue chosen by the group because it is shared across the communities they support. Meetings are either on Zoom or at a community meeting place (when we will refund travel costs).
Peer learning is one of the best ways to discuss real challenges, problem solve, fill in knowledge gaps about how systems work here, make connections, develop practical ideas and motivate and support each other.
Members meet to share learning on building a community group
We can invite staff from relevant agencies. They can explain the support they offer, listen to the experiences of the communities, build mutual understanding of challenges and expectations and explore how that service could work better for all refugees and asylum seekers.
Peer learning is one of the best ways to discuss real challenges, problem solve, fill in knowledge gaps about how systems work here, make connections, develop practical ideas and motivate and support each other.
Young members discuss the particular challenges they face
Its also a great chance to make new friends across different communities you may not have met before. Our members develop mutual understanding and respect, gain strength, confidence and motivation from each other and unite in collective action for change.
Action planning with Albin and the Roma community
Our staff will listen to your ideas and help you develop a practical action plan. They will take into account the time you have available in your busy life. They could help you secure the resources you need for the activities you plan, such as places to meet funding to cover costs.
Panganai visiting the Meadow Well allotments to gather ideas for a community gardening project
We can arrange visits to people and groups with similar aims so you can hear how they developed their organisation and activities. And we can introduce you to other members who share the same aims so you can explore working together.
We can link you to organisations that have something to offer your community. They can help you plan outings for your community or to explore local history.
Zobida and Rebar visited the Northumberland Natrional Parks officer at The Sill to hear about opportunities for communities to explore the park
Our training is designed to help you adapt and refine your advocacy skills, use your voice effectively, identify where levers for change exist in the UK context and fill in knowledge gaps about how things work in the UK.
Perhaps you were an activist for change in your home country – its often the reason why people had to leave. But trying to develop action within the UK’s different systems and structures can feel disempowering and demotivating. Our training aims to provide a re-orientation map to help you be an effective agent for change in the UK context.
Our Community Advocacy training helps you explore how to
- use evidence and your voice most effectively at meetings with other agencies to promote improvements for your community
- raise and escalate an issue for one of your community members through the most effective pathways
- use the Welcome to the UK video guides to help new arrivals adapt to life, laws, social norms and expectations in the UK
We also arrange training to fit knowledge gaps our members identify. For example we have arranged training on:
• using online survey tools to assess the views and needs of your community
• understanding the UK approach to safeguarding children
• reporting hate crime
• how the UK parliament works and how you can have your voice heard
Chester with trainer from the Parliamentary Outreach Project
Ibrahim and Ileana after attending Safeguarding training organised with Family Law solicitors
Euphrasia receives her Community Safety Champion certificate from the Police & Crime Commissioner
Diamond using her voice to advocate for change
We can link you to other organisations that could help you deliver your action plan, gain influence and secure support for your ideas.
We can link you to
- Local services relevant to the change you want to make for your community
- Local Development Agencies that can help you develop your organisation’s structure and policies
- Funders who could support you with the financial costs of the activities you plan
- Local platforms where you can speak up about the issues facing your community and recommend what would work better
- The North East Migration Partnership’s local multi agency meetings on migration, where you can discuss issues and develop solutions with representatives from the local council, Home Office contractors, health, education, police and others
Sara and Gaby speak up at a meeting organised the Trades Union Congress to mark National Hate Crime Awareness Week
“Through my experience I think it has empowered me and given me the ideas I need to run my project and now I’m doing things better as I’m following this through. I have the information I have been lacking before. It made me feel more confident and more knowledgeable so now I have a better understanding of what I need to do, and not to do, in order for the project to move forwards. I feel ambitious and I know where to go to when I need help. I have been attending some of the health workshop which are really helpful because I meet people who are doing a similar project to me and they manage to empower me and give me ideas”
“You can look at one problem in different ways and then try to work out which way is better. Its given me that opportunity, its given me the confidence, its given me the boost, the contacts required to set up my own group. The constant support from the people around has been quite motivational. Though I had the idea in mind of what I wanted to start, I didn’t know how to start it. Its helped me find suitable and reasonable ways to actually take it forwards. And also its helped contribute to finding certain members of the (my) group….they had the idea of education (too) but they didn’t know how to move forwards, and that’s where I came in. We met at a meeting and then we started talking about it… ….one thing leading to another. The wave effect, the ripple effect”
If you would like to join in or find out more please contact us at email info@refugeevoices.org.uk or call John on 07852269486 or Suraiya on 07407804539.
In 2023 we created a partnership with MVDA to help deliver this support across the North East region.
Go to our our members page to see the brilliant work others like you are doing across this region to support their communities. All began with an idea and the motivation to help others.
The unique value of peer support
We know people who have experienced persecution, fled their countries, and faced the challenges and uncertainty of the asylum system and resettlement in the UK understand what others are going through. And they know what helps.
Peer support builds on shared experience, language, nationality, ethnicity, culture, gender, locality or issue. Uniquely it gives space for isolated, disorientated, traumatised and highly stressed people to re-group, remember who they are, feel safe, and empower themselves.
Peer support groups
- help individuals create valuable social bonds with others like them
- broker links to other local communities
- help a marginalised community develop a wider network of support and influence
- play an active role in promoting settlement and integration.
Setting up and running a co-community group also re-builds lost confidence and empowers those stepping forward to take a lead in civil society.
“Most of the people who are activists were activists in some form or way in their home country. That is what I’ve seen. But I’ve also seen some people who came into the UK young, came with their parents, and they turn activist because they felt a moral duty to do something to help their community (Herbert, our Community Support Project Manager)
“There is an African proverb that says assisting and giving brings more joy than receiving”.
Our Programmes
We are empowering refugees and asylum seekers to support their communities
Are you a refugee or an asylum seeker living in the North East region with an idea to help your community? We want to help you turn your ideas into action. In the last 3 years we have supported over 100 refugee and asylum seeker community mobilisers, activists and advocates to organise support for their communities, increase their advocacy skills, build community organisations and widen their networks of influence and support.
Click here to see how we can
help you..
We are supporting members to share new, urgent and sometimes difficult messages with their communities
Newly arrived communities need a lot of information to help them adapt quickly to life in the UK with its unfamiliar systems, laws, norms, responsibilities and expectations. Communities are more receptive to messages that are co-produced and delivered by trusted peers.
Click here to find out more
We are influencing practice by building the knowledge and skills of front line professionals
We deliver training to front line staff and students that provides insight from lived experiences and builds empathetic understanding about challenges to family resilience, health and wellbeing, and safety. It helps trainees look behind the labels of ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’ and imagine themselves in their shoes.
Click here to find out more
We are influencing policy through our Collective Voice
Our members use their collective voice to influence how strategies and services are designed.
Click here to find out more