A case study by the Basis Project.
Transcript
Leila Ismail
My name is Leila Ismail and I’m an advocacy and advice worker for Refugee Women of Bristol.
Nuwa Serunjogi
I’m Nuwa Serunjogi, I’m the Organisational Development Worker for the South West. I work for Refugee Action on the Basis Project. I’ve been in post for 8 months, since August 2009, and from the beginning when I got this post, one of the groups that was on the database for the refugee communities in the South West was the Refugee Women of Bristol. So when I started my work, I called up all the different organisations and Refugee Women of Bristol was one of the first organisations to respond to my calls.
Leila Ismail
In the drop in centre we provide a lot of services, one of them is English classes. We have three English classes with different groups. The first one is Level 1, or perhaps lower than that. We mainly serve women from 50 to 70 years old. We have also got another two English classes.
We also provide a crèche in the building. We have an arts session in the afternoon; we have two sewing machines; we provide exercise and therapy; we also work with the Red Cross who comes and provides massage therapy. And we also provide advice and advocacy in the drop in.
We also have two other workers apart from the coordinator. We have a Kurdish worker, and an Arabic speaking community worker. We also have four volunteers, not mainly from refugee communities but we also have volunteers from English communities who work with us as well as refugee communities.
Nuwa Serunjogi
I met with Hazel Stack who is the coordinator/manager for the group, and I introduced myself, and offered to provide capacity building support the Refugee Women of Bristol. She accepted this offer, and really from the get-go we established a really good working relationship.
Around that time, Refugee Women of Bristol was preparing for its AGM - Annual General Meeting - and I think in the month of September or October, they had an AGM where they elected a new management committee. I was fortunate enough to be invited to the AGM and I was taken aback by the incredible energy I saw; from the members, from the outgoing committee, the incoming members. It was a very well attended meeting, very well organised - at their drop in centre community hall, off Stapleton Road. And I knew that I was fortunate enough to be working with this group.
Negat Hussein
My name is Negat. I’ve been with Refugee Women of Bristol for about three years. This year I was elected to be the chair of Refugee Women; I was quiet delighted. I was chosen to be the chair, because I was one of the oldest members. And I always wanted to support this organisation, that’s why I joined them in the beginning. This was an opportunity, and I was quite delighted that a lot of people wanted me to be the chair.
When we approached the Basis Project, it was because we had [been] unsuccessful [with] funding. So Nuwa was the person that worked along with us. He’d been working along with Hazel a lot to get fundraising and successful funding and even helped us to register as a charity, because we weren’t a charity. But now, just a few months ago, we are a registered charity, which is really good, we’re really please with that.
We had some difficulties but he was the person that was supporting us through all this paperwork and process. And through him as well, we had two major fundings so we can cover us for the whole of next year, we we’re really please with that.
And all of this happened with this help. And Nuwa as well, offered us a lot of support with the management committee because we’re quite new. So the first training’s going to be in April. He’s going to be training us how to manage, and to [know] what needs we have, and what courses we can do. So he’s going to be doing some of the courses with us.
And he works along side Hazel a lot too, to make sure you know she’s doing right papers and sending them out. And Hazel’s doing the management committee training as well. We’ve got a fundraising committee that she…and whatever she been trained in, she passes it on to the management committee.
Nuwa Serunjogi
The work that I’m engaged in with Refugee Women of Bristol is on a number of levels. I’m generally supporting them with their [overall] capacity – the way they run their organisation, the way they manage their affairs. To that end, they’ve been able to secure charity registration. As of now, Refugee Women of Bristol are now a registered a charity, from the beginning of this year; they’re still awaiting their charity number but I believe that it will come through.
I’ve also been supporting them with fundraising. With my support, working with the chair, they’ve been able to raise funds from the Hilden Charitable Fund and the HCD Memorial. I think all together, close to £10,000. They secured £4,500 from the Hilden Chartiable Fund and £5,000 from HCD Memorial. So that’s been..they’ve been very fortunate in that respect. More importantly they’ve got also got a number of other funding applications in the pipeline [which you can look through].
Leila Ismail
[We have a lot of women] coming to the drop in. Several women are from Somali community, Sudanese, Iraqi, Turkish, Afghanistan, Iran and Africa somewhere, Libya Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal, and I can’t remember them all, there’s too many of them, but last time we counted 18 nationalities.
Nuwa Serunjogi
It’s an organisation that is run by women, by refugee women, with the support of a few English nationals – also women. So it’s a very well run organisation, but they’re true to their roots.
Leila Ismail
We provide workshops on mental health, counselling and healthy eating and exercise and fitness. We also work with other organisations. One of them is called Forward - Forward is based in London and they campaign on behalf of African women about Female Genital Mutilation and forced young marriage.
I also work for part time to coordinate the [Bristol] project which is being funded by Bristol PCT and we create awareness of Female Genital Mutilation. One of the main work I do is to recruit refugee women to train them and to empower the community to stop practising FGM and also work with the professionals and raise awareness about the illegal issues [with] Female Genital Mutilation. The summer is approaching and we have a summer campaign, which we’ll launch in May until June. And we hope that members of the community will take part of marching in the centre of Bristol and show their support of stopping the practice here, and in Africa.
Negat Hussein
The unique thing about [Bristol] Refugee Women is that it is only based on refugee women and it’s only a women’s group. And the other thing is that we have other women that work for Refugee Women as well and all of them being members of Refugee Women. And whenever we have a vacancy, this is the first people that come along and they can apply for it and they get the opportunity to have the first job with us.
At the same time, to be able to provide voluntary work for the women from refugee backgrounds, asylum seekers. And the other thing as well, is we provide the management committee. And to be a [management committee] member from Refugee Women and then to go on, to have the taste to be a member of a management committee, and a lot of them have never been on a management committee, even myself before. So they get the opportunity to be on there, and they can always have a chance, and you can always learn new things and you can go on in life, you know, to pick up other things. And even build up confidence, self-confidence. Because a lot of people don’t see themselves sitting in a meeting and making decisions you know, on behalf of other people. But I think it’s a good opportunity, what we have now.
Then in the future hopefully we’re going to have two more days at the drop in because we’re getting over demand now. So hopefully if we can get more funding, we’re going to get another day to have a drop in to have more computer courses. And then have other… there’s other things they want to do as well, other courses….maybe see, to help them do that.
So hopefully… I hope this organisation is going be up and running, because we’ve been up and running for 8 years now so hopefully we’re going to grow stronger and then continue with the job we’re doing because there’s a big demand. And I think what we are now is really good and hopefully with Nuwa’s and Basis’ help and support we’re going to get even stronger.
