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Craft and Conversation

A Spotlight on Wednesday’s Craft and Conversation, which started a year ago.

A joint initiative run by Empathy Action and Tonbridge Welcomes Refugees, it brings together women from Syria and the UK. Here’s what it’s all about by our Becky Matthewson, a regular volunteer at craft and conversation.

Hello, I’m Becky and I volunteer with Craft & Conversation. I’d like to invite you to take a seat, grab a coffee, and hear a little of what we get up to most Wednesday mornings, a time that has become a highlight of my week.

First on the scene is always Sandy; she lights a single scented candle and warms the place up. On goes the kettle, out comes the cake, and the door is propped open in welcome.

Sandy is the gentle engine of this gathering. Her ideas fuel its smooth running, and she shows us all how we can create whatever we want.

We are a smallish group of women from near and afar. Some of us can craft, others are better at brewing the coffee (like me, although I’m grateful that Sandy never gives up on my efforts).

Each week we find needles and threads, wools or coloured pencils, or grey offcuts from fleece blankets produced for refugees (now ready to be upcycled in a very imaginative way).

Sometimes the group is quiet with concentration, the calm punctuated only by a low recital of numbers, in Arabic or English, as we count our stitches. At other times, there is raucous laughter when one of the native English speakers attempts to learn the Arabic word for, say, “bubble” (it’s a tricky one).

Together we sit and talk around a big red table, making anything from juggling balls to friendship bracelets. Today we crochet squares in cream and blue. When finished they will be shaped into a blanket for a Syrian friend with a new-born.

We even know how to build gingerbread houses for Christmas.

Which leads me onto food, because we always end up talking about food. It seems that the Syrian women among us cook in a very go-slow and thoughtful kind of way – never is it a shove-in-the-oven affair. The way they describe it makes us all stop and listen. The flavours, the spices, the eating of it. It’s a taste of home.

Craft & Conversation meets on Wednesdays between 10.30am and 12.00pm. If you’d like to be involved in this, or other work, please get in touch. Craft may not be your forte, but neither is it mine (I know I’m better at making tea).

It’s a wonderful opportunity to be part of something rather special.

Contact us to find out more about volunteering opportunities.

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: community action, Craft and Conversation, Craftivisim, Crafts, Culture, Empathy, Empathy building through crafting, Handicrafts, Refugee, Syria, Syrian Refugees, volunteer, volunteering

Then & Now: “Imagine- children’s refugee journeys”

On October 6 our friends Ruth Connelly, Dannielle Gostling, Mike Clarke and several others from the cast of Desperate Journeys put on a powerful and inspiring show at the Stag Theatre in Sevenoaks entitled ‘Imagine’ using children.

It was part of the Safe Passage ‘Our Turn’ campaign to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the Kindertransport, a scheme that ultimately led to the rescue of 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi persecution on the eve of World War II, and to highlight the plight of child refugees today.  

Safe Passage is calling on the Government to agree to fully fund a scheme to resettle 10,000 children at risk over 10 years from Europe and conflict regions across the world – matching the Kindertransport efforts.

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Playworks Speech & Drama Education and Sevenoaks Theatre Workshop (groups which Ruth, Dannielle and Mike are involved with) worked with their young drama students to turn a creative vision written by Sir Michael Morpurgo into a moving theatrical production, linking the experiences of children in the 1930s to what others are going through today.

Empathy Action was able to provide support, lending some of the Desperate Journeys set and props, and helping to adapt some of the scenes.  For many of the younger children this was their acting debut and they all contributed to help bring empathy for the audience which included local councillors.

The local refugee welcome groups in Sevenoaks and Tonbridge are following up the event with meetings with MPs, county, district and town councillors to make the case for greater help for child refugees.  

If you would like to be involved in Desperate Journeys or activities around it please get in touch.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Desperate Journeys, Empathy with Refugees, Global Refugee Crisis, Imagine, Refugee simulation, Refugees, simulations, Syrian Refugees

One Festival Bracelet, Two Refugee Stories

(Photos: Small Projects Istanbul)

A school has become more engaged in the global refugee crisis following an exercise in empathy with students. They have had bespoke bracelets produced for their summer festival, made by several Syrian refugee ladies in Istanbul.

We asked one of the parents, and key donor of the bracelets, together with one of the Syrian ladies, currently in Istanbul who were commissioned to make the bracelets, a set of questions. Their answers were incredibly moving from refugees both past and present looking to the future generation with hope.

What is the most important thing, for you, about these bracelets? 

SYRIAN LADY: Making the bracelets are helping us to make money and support our children. The most important thing the money is used for is rent and schooling for the kids, the most important thing for us and what ‘breaks our backs’ is the rent, it’s more important than the food and clothes, if we don’t have money for the rent they will be out on the streets. We can live without eating so much food, we can live with less, we can live without buying new clothes (nobody is seeing us), we can swap between us and share our clothes. In Syria we owned our own house, we were never in a situation where we needed to think about money for rent, but here in Turkey if we don’t pay the rent it will cause many more problems for us.

SCHOOL PARENT: I am an American journalist, living in England, however, my parents were Bulgarian refugees who escaped from Communism in 1971 and lived in a refugee camp for six months outside Vienna, where I was conceived. My parents loved their country but not the politics of Communism. They received political asylum from the U.S. and my parents arrived to America in 1972 with $80, one suitcase, my baby brother and me on the way. I was the first in all the generations of my family to be born in America. My father was a surgeon in Bulgaria and went on to become chief surgeon at a hospital in Miami Beach, Florida. My mother was a nurse/midwife in Bulgaria and went on to become a maternity nurse in America. They didn’t accept her medical degree from Bulgaria and she had to go back to college to do all her training again as a nurse when she arrived in America. But once she finished her coursework, she found a job as a nurse on the maternity ward at a hospital in Miami and delivered babies there for 25 years until shortly before she died. 

The bracelets to me signify their bravery and voice, in a less-than-accepting world. I’m less concerned about the bracelets themselves per se than about bringing more global attention to the crisis in Syria and that particularly of the refugees, to show that we are all people, regardless of race, religion or the colour of our skin…and that refugees are neither dumb, ignorant, uneducated or trying to game the system of another country. Refugees are in the position they are in because life at home was so dangerous, or their human rights and political freedoms so suppressed that they had no choice but to leave their homeland and beloved countries. We could all be refugees if our governments changed from a democracy to a dictatorship, and the same horrors unfolded in our own lands.

What is your message to the people who will wear these bracelets?

SYRIAN LADY: In Syria I used to feel like a mother more than in Turkey, because in Syria I used to spend more time with my kids, I used to take more care with them. I used to spend in time educating them, playing with them, taking them out, take care of all their needs. But here in Turkey I don’t feel this because I have to go out and work, I am giving them what they need but it’s not enough, I love & provide for them but not in the same way as in Syria, I am taking care of them in the general things, practical matters but not in the deep, quality time, what’s what really makes me a mother. We both suffer from this, me as a mother and them as the children. Our message to the mothers and children who will wear these bracelets is, buy more! Share the message of what the bracelet represents to you! Tell everyone, tell your friends and show everyone, do some marketing and advertising for us!

SCHOOL PARENT: My message to festival goers is to:

“Put your biases aside. What does a refugee look like? You may be surprised to know that a refugee looks exactly like me”, and that “People don’t walk 2000 miles across Europe because they want to go camping and sleep in a tent. They leave their homelands because their human rights have been violated and what they are looking for isn’t your pity, but for acceptance, the chance at freedom and the opportunity to live in a safe haven. They are looking for hope”.

But I have a message for the Syrian women and their families. To them I’d say, “Please don’t ever give up hope, despite how dark life seems at the moment. You are all so very very brave and I have so much respect for how far you’ve come already and the deepest sympathy for your losses at home. You will find a way to a new life and a new community. Trust in the kindness of people, embrace those that help you and keep showing the rest of the world how to open their hearts and their minds.”

What is your hope for the future?

SYRIAN LADY: We wish that our kids will hopefully be successful in their lives and never live the crisis that we are living now. Most importantly I want them to continue their education.

The question was also asked to their children, their response is… at first a hesitant silence, then one of their sons says that he wishes for his mother ‘good work, not more work, but good work, a happy life and to stay strong’
(The mother gives him a gentle nod and he smiles shyly)

SCHOOL PARENT: My hopes for these refugees is that they are granted political asylum soon and are able to find new beginnings where they can find hope, acceptance, peace, safety, freedom and some semblance of a normal life where they aren’t viewed as a refugee but as an equal, and allowed to shine.

… As I prepare to move back to the U.S. in a corporate move that will ship the entire contents of our house on a 40ft container, I just thought how truly privileged I am and how remarkable it was that my parents arrived in America with just one suitcase, having left all their worldly possessions behind that night they escaped. They were very brave.

Most importantly, I just wanted to reassure these Syrian women and their families that there is hope. We were one of the families that made it and succeeded through a lot of determination and hard work. It wasn’t always easy but my parents never gave up.

I owe my parents a lot of gratitude for the life they gave me and the choices they made to ensure our freedom.

I hope my words can offer some comfort and, at a minimum, some understanding.

Events like this allow a crucial moment and platform for people, like these, to narrate a story and craft empathy. We, too, hope that the Syrian ladies’ children could echo words such as these from the school parent in years to come.

If you are interested in creating a bespoke product, working with marginalised communities, for your event please get in touch as we are keen to develop more empathy in events through products and event hosts sharing the stories behind the products.

Displaced Syrian ladies living in Istanbul making the Summer Festival bracelet for St Michael’s Prep School. (Photos: Small Projects Istanbul)

#SM17 Summer Festival Bracelets

Bespoke school summer festival bracelets made in their colours

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #SM17, Empathy, empathy action, Empathy Actions, Fundraising, Gifts that Give Twice, Global Citizenship, Parents Action, Refugee, Refugees, school action, Small Projects Istanbul, St Michaels Prep School, Syria Refugees, Syrian Refugees

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