Stories of Hope and Home
Enabling Encounter
Stories of Hope and Home's Enabling encounter project comes in two parts.
Firstly we aim to create safe space for people who have lived experience of seeking asylum to come together: to build community and share their experiences.
Our sessions together involve conversation, creative writing, and many cups of tea! The participants are incredibly diverse: we have counted 25 nationalities among those who have attended our activities, with people of different genders, ages, cultures and faiths: and yet there is a real "family feel" to the community. There could be a danger that such a close community could become closed in itself, but because it is made up of people who truly understand the value the of being made welcome it remains open and welcoming to others: since September we have already welcomed 6 new participants, and delight in the constant flow of new faces joining us.
The second part of the project is to take the stories of those who have sought sanctuary in the UK out to others, especially in schools.
Not everyone who has sought sanctuary wants to share their story, but for those who do, helping them to find their voice and the confidence to do so is beneficial for everyone involved: No-one tells the story of seeking sanctuary better and more powerfully than those for whom it is their lived experience. Our aim is to help challenge misconceptions and stereotypes by putting a face and a story in the place of the statistics so that when someone hears the word "refugee" or "asylum seeker" instead of a number or an anonymous news headline, they see the face of someone they have met, someone whose story they have heard, someone who is a real person to them. Last academic year we were able to do 25 school visits, and with the funding we have received, this year, we are hoping to extend our school visits programme even further, with both return visits to some of the schools we have already worked with to enable their pupils to go deeper in their understanding, as well as reaching out to new schools.
For more infomation please see
our Website by clicking here, or
our Twitter Feed by clicking here.
Firstly we aim to create safe space for people who have lived experience of seeking asylum to come together: to build community and share their experiences.
Our sessions together involve conversation, creative writing, and many cups of tea! The participants are incredibly diverse: we have counted 25 nationalities among those who have attended our activities, with people of different genders, ages, cultures and faiths: and yet there is a real "family feel" to the community. There could be a danger that such a close community could become closed in itself, but because it is made up of people who truly understand the value the of being made welcome it remains open and welcoming to others: since September we have already welcomed 6 new participants, and delight in the constant flow of new faces joining us.
The second part of the project is to take the stories of those who have sought sanctuary in the UK out to others, especially in schools.
Not everyone who has sought sanctuary wants to share their story, but for those who do, helping them to find their voice and the confidence to do so is beneficial for everyone involved: No-one tells the story of seeking sanctuary better and more powerfully than those for whom it is their lived experience. Our aim is to help challenge misconceptions and stereotypes by putting a face and a story in the place of the statistics so that when someone hears the word "refugee" or "asylum seeker" instead of a number or an anonymous news headline, they see the face of someone they have met, someone whose story they have heard, someone who is a real person to them. Last academic year we were able to do 25 school visits, and with the funding we have received, this year, we are hoping to extend our school visits programme even further, with both return visits to some of the schools we have already worked with to enable their pupils to go deeper in their understanding, as well as reaching out to new schools.
For more infomation please see
our Website by clicking here, or
our Twitter Feed by clicking here.
