A case study from the Basis Project.
Edited transcript
Siddee Majubah - Liver World Community Sports I came to this country as an asylum seeker in the year 2000 and with the help of Lee Omar at The Basis Project I’ve been able to set up a project called the Liver World Community Sports, using sports to integrate refugees and the local community.
Lee Omar – Basis Project Organisational Development Worker for the Basis Project
The group has come a long way in the two years that I’ve been working with them. They’re all very committed and have taken with both hands the opportunity the Basis Project has given them.
Siddee Majubah
Most of the recent refugees in the area have been settled in Kensington, which is a very deprived part of Liverpool. We saw a lot of problems there, a lot of conflict, so we decided to use sport to bring people together and create a platform for community cohesion. We created a football ‘world cup’ for teams from 20 different communities living in the city.
Lee Omar
After the success of their football tournament the group had a vision of taking 12 young local white teenagers to Africa so that they could learn more about the country and show what they had in common with the people there. I worked on a fundraising strategy with them and though we had a lot of rejections from funders we made contacts with the housing associations where the young people lived who were willing to support the project.
Siddee Majubah
We took the young people to Gambia – before we went many were not even aware that Africa was a continent with different countries in it. When we got back from the trip to Gambia we went to a famous Liverpool pub that used to be a centre for the British National Party and presented an exhibition about what we had done. A woman there said, “This has never happened before – it’s good!”
