This is a guest post by Robert Muza.

On Saturday we hosted the 10th anniversary of Newport Refuge Day thus Family Day Out and Football tournament a Refuge Week event organised and led by myself (Robert Muza) and Zimbabwe Newport Volunteering Association.

The turn out was massive and the morning rains failed to stop us from setting up and running the tournament. Later we had a lovely sunny day.

This year winners are ‘Slovakia FC’ a migrants team who won against ‘We Are Here For BBQ FC’ a Welsh native team. The attendance numbers are as follows, 120 refugees out of the 350 community members attended the event, 90 football players participated in the tournament, 5 teams of refugees out of 14 teams who took part in the tournament.

The tournament was officially opened by Mr Sean Wharton a football agent (ex Sunderland AFC midfielder and ex Manager of Cwmbran Town FC) who grew up in Newport gave an emotional motivational speech about his experience as a premier league footballer and manager for Cwmbran Town FC. The hand over of trophies and medals was done by Emmy Chater the Newport City Migration Officer and Chairperson of Newport & District Refuge Support Group.

Our objectives were met, thus promoting health communities, social inclusion and integration of Refugees and Asylum seekers into Newport society. Interesting and notable was the match between women refugees from Newport City playing women refuges from Cardiff.