{"id":1924,"date":"2023-01-10T12:13:09","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T12:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writeupyourstreet.org\/?p=1924"},"modified":"2023-01-21T11:58:50","modified_gmt":"2023-01-21T11:58:50","slug":"volunteering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writeupyourstreet.org\/index.php\/2023\/01\/10\/volunteering\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteering"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

2022<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting 2022, Gloucester has become an asylum seeker reception centre. Many arrive straight from wartorn countries, and many of us residents are loving welcoming them! Let me tell you a story about how these newly arrived people from countries like El Salvador, Sudan and Iran are moving from exclusion and boredom, to inclusion and fulfillment. At the start of the year, in St Catharines church we were interested in helping those with limited English living in the Kingsholm area. We thought we could provide English conversation one morning a week. We told one or two people, but instead four men turned up from another parish, having recently arrived from Iran and desperate to learn English. So we pulled up some chairs and gave an impromptu English lesson. The next week word had got round and the number doubled, the week after the number doubled again, now we see a regular stream of some 30 to 50 people every week. We sit round tables of about eight people per table with one volunteer teacher and often even one volunteer assistant too.\u00a0We have two people from our local congregation who are qualified ESOL teachers; we also\u00a0have two who were Bible translators overseas and so excited to volunteer their time once a week to teach a language again. Then we have a wonderful individual called Roz who GARAS sent our way. She started off as an observer, but now teaches too. Her table of learners from Central America\u00a0say she is fantastic!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently Roz\u2019s learners asked her if she knew of any volunteering they could do.\u00a0She looked on the app \u2018Next Door\u2019, and lo and behold there was a very opportunity that week, with someone asking for volunteers to come and paint street railings. So Roz contacted the organiser, and her and the Central American asylum seekers made the area more beautiful. The lovely thing was that the man who had asked for volunteers treated them to fish and chips in their lunch break, and also took them all with Roz\u00a0to watch the firework display in Cheltenham. There are a lot of kind people out there. The same group were back the following week for a litter pick-up. Some asylum seekers have now moved from very empty schedules to very busy ones – which is good! There is nothing worse than being alone in your room with nothing to do and no one to talk to, not being allowed to work, and only the TV for company with constant pictures through news channels of the ongoing tragedies back home and the survivor guilt that comes with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others too in the city are welcoming. There are also English classes at St James church, Trinity Baptist Church, Adult Education, Roots cafe. Friendship Cafe runs a cooking club once a week and they now borrow a minibus from \u2018Fair Shares\u2019 to transport those with limited mobility. Two of the ladies from Pakistan on my St. Catherine\u2019s English table go to the Friendship Caf\u00e9 cooking club as well, it\u2019s really nice to know they are being looked after in other settings too. Meanwhile Family Haven is being enjoyed by some parents with very young children. Longlevens
Football Club runs football sessions twice a week which the men seem to enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are plenty of opportunities to show kindness alongside decisions our governments make on global migration too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henrietta Cozens<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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