Refugee Week 2016: Different pasts, shared future
Friends participated in events to mark Refugee Week 2016
Refugee Week 2016 took place across Britain between 20 and 26 June.
This year it celebrated acts of welcome shown to refugees by individuals and communities across the United Kingdom and Europe. Friends were among those who took part.
Lichfield Hope Support Group (LHSG), established by Lichfield Friends in 2012, held a fundraising concert on 26 June. Its aim was to raise funds for destitute refugees.
Berry Dicker, of Lichfield Meeting, told the Friend that LHSG was set up ‘to help those refugees who couldn’t go back to the persecution they’d fled but were not given any means to survive in this country’.
It has since broadened its remit and now helps local groups working on behalf of refugees in the United Kingdom or internationally. The concert featured a local choir, the Lichfield University of the Third Age ensemble and two young musicians.
Chichester Friends took part in a vigil for refugees in the Lady Chapel of Chichester Cathedral on 21 June. The vigil ran from Mattins (7.30am) to Evensong (5.30pm) with participants attending both.
The chairmen of two local refugee organisations (Sanctuary in Chichester and Friends Without Borders Portsmouth) spent the day at the vigil and over sixty other people joined for some of the time. The day was punctuated by seven programmed ‘reflections’ on topics ranging from Calais to the programmed arrival of Syrians in Chichester.
The following day Quaker Michael Woolley, chairman of Friends Without Borders Portsmouth, took part in a panel discussion following a showing of the Stephen Frears film Dirty Pretty Things at the University of Portsmouth.
Central Manchester Friends Stewart and Elizabeth Bailey spoke on grassroots support for asylum seekers, on behalf of Oldham Unity, at a Refugee Week event organised by the North West Regional Asylum Activism project and United for Change, in collaboration with the Portico Library, Manchester and Pod Collective.
