In October last year one of my colleague’s told me that our Volunteer Centre was going to start a project with the Hammersmith and Fulham Refugee forum, and that we were going to participate.
The name of the project was Our Stories Our Voices and the aim was to involve members of the refugee community in producing stories (illustrations and writing). This would increase understanding of diversity, raise awareness of issues faced by migrant and refugee communities and encourage community cohesion.
I was really happy to learn about this project, but also a little bit scared; the project seemed very interesting but also really challenging. We had to recruited young people with a refugee background and, with them, do some workshops in which they could tell us stories about their countries as well as illustrate them. Following the workshops we needed to collect all the stories and put them in a book that it would be presented at Refugee Week event that would take place in London in the middle of June.
We did a lot of workshops in the months up to December and we collected a large number of stories. I did these workshops together with my colleague Peter who. But at the end of December he told me that from January he was not going to lead the project anymore but that I would do it. I was really worried about this, I didn’t know what to do and I was scared I would make mistakes. But I did it. I started to run the workshops alone and to meet with the children and I have to say that it was not as hard as I thought.
Now, I’m still doing it. I’m really happy about how it’s going, I really enjoy it, I feel more confident about it, I love doing the workshops with the children and I’m sure that at the end the project will be a success.
The name of the project was Our Stories Our Voices and the aim was to involve members of the refugee community in producing stories (illustrations and writing). This would increase understanding of diversity, raise awareness of issues faced by migrant and refugee communities and encourage community cohesion.
I was really happy to learn about this project, but also a little bit scared; the project seemed very interesting but also really challenging. We had to recruited young people with a refugee background and, with them, do some workshops in which they could tell us stories about their countries as well as illustrate them. Following the workshops we needed to collect all the stories and put them in a book that it would be presented at Refugee Week event that would take place in London in the middle of June.
We did a lot of workshops in the months up to December and we collected a large number of stories. I did these workshops together with my colleague Peter who. But at the end of December he told me that from January he was not going to lead the project anymore but that I would do it. I was really worried about this, I didn’t know what to do and I was scared I would make mistakes. But I did it. I started to run the workshops alone and to meet with the children and I have to say that it was not as hard as I thought.
Now, I’m still doing it. I’m really happy about how it’s going, I really enjoy it, I feel more confident about it, I love doing the workshops with the children and I’m sure that at the end the project will be a success.