Chesterfield Labour Refugee Campaign welcomes DRS
This talk given to Chesterfield Labour Refugee Campaign on the 20th January on zoom, by Trustee Hazel, provides an excellent summary of some of our “best bits”!
I’ll talk about before Lockdown. We had around 80 volunteers and nearly 100 asylum seekers coming to DRS on Thursdays and Saturdays (not all at the same time !), so as you can imagine, it was buzzing with activity.We had English lessons, art lessons, sewing and knitting, gardening, woodwork, DJ and guitar lessons. We’d all gather round to sing world music together while playing musical instruments.
Refugees have refurbished our storeroom, building shelves and storage units.
A hard working group of gardeners have transformed a jungle into a lovely garden of flower beds and vegetable plots, and it’s now a fabulous place for outside lessons.Apart from raising funds and sending clothes, tents etc to Calais and Syria, our main objective is to empower refugees with the English language and this is continuing during lockdown, by a dedicated team, giving online group and individual lessons.
When it became more frequent towards the end of 2020, that asylum seekers were being taken to detention centres, one of our young volunteers has made little cards giving basic advice in the relevant languages, which the refugees can keep on their person at all times. This is information like to have a copy of your passport and documents, a copy of your keys and give to a friend or neighbour, etc.
Working with Bike Back Derby, we have so far given out 30 bikes to refugees and have a bicycle kitchen for repairs and maintenance. Bikes are great for getting around the city when you don’t have bus fare.
We’ve been on walks in the countryside, some with the Peak Ranger and the people of Youlgreave gave us tea and cakes in their village hall. We regularly litter pick in the streets around St Anne’s.
The neighbourhood has got to know us, and during 2020 we’ve had a little shop outside the hall, which has brought in a good sum, since we haven’t done any car boot sales or fetes this year.
We’ve done a radio show with Derby Sound and we celebrate our friendship and community with music and dance evenings. Not forgetting our summer and Christmas fayres. You can imagine we are dying to get back to all this.
In 2018, we went into Derby College as part of a volunteering project. We were able to raise the profile of refugees and explain why people leave their home and family, describing their arduous journey - all in an interactive way. We also talked about the current trend to leave tents and sleeping bags etc at festivals, how it impacts on the environment, but how we salvage them to be transported to Calais.
For the last 2 years we have done a Reverse Advent Calendar of toiletries. We got an enormous response the first year, especially from schools and colleges, less so this year because of COVID. Every week we are sorting clothes to send to Syria and Calais, but we also raise a lot of money selling the unsuitable clothes on eBay or for recycling, so every donation is appreciated.
We raise money from birthday just-giving, from eBay sales and one volunteer has single-handedly raised over £1000, by selling face masks. If you’re ever in Wirksworth, you can buy them from the waste-not shop called Skopa. Also people give monthly donations and one off donations.
And we have specific donations to cover our rent.
As an example, our most recent donations were:
>> Donate4Refugees £800
>> Care4Calais £480
>> MIN Syria £320
>> Palestine MAP £250
>> International Refugee Centre £150 match funded to £450.
We have received a lottery funding of £7,000 which we’re using to increase our English resources, including buying laptops and getting WiFi installed; which will be amazing.
In 2021, or probably 2022, we hope to once again be salvaging tents and sleeping bags from local festivals. We usually get a huge amount of both which then need a thorough cleaning before being sent to Calais.
You can see that we’re broadening experiences for the refugees and they play active roles in the running of DRS, two have been appointed storeroom managers, and they have a place on the board of trustees. Whatever we do, we’re all involved.
We love having visitors, so once we’re back open, you are very welcome to come and have a cuppa. There’s always a lovely homemade cake. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and our website is derbyshirerefugeesolidarity.org
