Refugee Week at Croydon College

A guest post by Temor Alkaisi.

The Refugee Week event at Croydon College was held on 23rd June for ESOL students. At Croydon College they have about 200 students studying on the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) course.

This year at Croydon College we took another route to Refugee Week by recruiting a group of students to work on the event. The group met every week to plan. The process was from March to June. First we started delivering presentations in classes about the refugee crisis and refugee week. We then started work on the event planning and seeing who we could invite. I also planned a photography exhibition, One Life, One Object, to be presented at the Refugee Week event. The photography project was a collaboration between Croydon College and Counterpoints Arts. We asked students to bring an object that was of value to them or something they brought with them when made their journey to the UK.

In terms of our Refugee Week event we were very honoured to have Maurice Wren speaking at the event for the third time. We also had Student Action for Refugees (STAR) director Emma Wilson speaking about what STAR does. She also introduced the STAR Equal Access Coordinator to the students. We were honoured to have Kazzum producer Lauren Irving introducing their video for Refugee Week to the students and speaking about what they offer for refugees and migrants. Also we had inspirational student speakers Theo and Mohamed. Another speaker was from the British Red Cross Youth Centre inviting young people to their project. We also had five ESOL students performing a Benjamin Poem. To end the event we had the amazing Freddy Macha playing drums for the students and a music student perform her new single about Diaspora.

Croydon College are open for artists to collaborate on projects involving their ESOL students!