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A small but significant number of children arrive without families or guardians and claim asylum on their own. Many of them have parents who have been killed or are imprisoned; some do not know the whereabouts of their families. They have often made long and dangerous journeys to reach a place of safety, fleeing war, political unrest and persecution. Having claimed asylum, they still have many challenges to face: going to the Home Office to explain their situation, enrolling at college, managing their money, settling in and making friends, and doing all of this in an unfamiliar language and an often hostile city. Many experience feelings of isolation, and have to cope with a very uncertain future. The vast majority of asylum claims made by unaccompanied minors fail and they are returned to their countries of origin.

We are proud to work with this group of young people, including them in all of our activities and ensuring that they have a safe, welcoming and sympathetic place to come each week. We have provided mentors and individual educational support and advocacy, accompanied them to appointments with solicitors, written letters of support for their asylum claims, and successfully challenged a local authority to increase its level of care for them. We have children from this group in our football team, youth club, study group, and ESOL class. One said that coming to us is ‘like having family’ and that ‘it gives me peace’.

However, we are also concerned about the level of care they receive and contributed a written response to the Joint Commission for Human Rights. Testimony was collected from a wide range of organisations and individuals, and a report has now been released. A summary was published in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/12/children-seeking-asylum-better-care and the full report can be seen here http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201314/jtselect/jtrights/9/902.htm

To kick-off Refugee Week 2013 - an insight into KKF’s experience working within the wider community! Stay tuned this week for discussion on a different topic each day!

The Klevis Kola Foundation’s day to day work involves meeting, talking to, spending time with, advocating for, and doing activities with refugee and asylum seeking children and families. We have a lot of experience relating to the daily challenges faced by refugees in our local area and we work hard to alleviate some of these. All of this is made possible by our team of volunteers (currently around 120 people). They come from a range of backgrounds and professions such as academics, doctors, human rights, teachers, musicians, artists, mental health professionals, and a comedian and actor. Whilst they bring with them a wealth of skills and experiences which greatly enhance our work, they also take their experiences of volunteering with us back into their professional lives.

Achieving long-term change involves more than just our activities here in south west London. We also work in partnership with other organisations and professions ranging from teachers in local schools to social workers to health professionals. We are currently hosting our first social work placement for a masters student from Kingston University and have found the process highly beneficial for all involved.

A new development in our work has been to include teaching and training. This year we have taught multiple sessions on refugee health and mental health to students from St George’s, University of London. Sessions include time spent talking face to face with people with whom we work, talking about challenges they have faced and the ongoing impacts on their lives. Students are able to see the many obstacles refugees face in accessing statutory services, and we hope will carry this with them into their professional lives where they will deliver high quality services to all.

We have also presented at a lecture on volunteering to students at London South Bank University and at a conference on safeguarding in Glasgow this month: http://www.kleviskola.org/news/2013/06/17/trustees-share-insight-of-kkfs-experience-of-safeguarding/. This conference discussed the very important challenges we face as a refugee community organisation in referring children to social care.

Please help us to share KKF’s insight into the challenges refugees face!

At a safeguarding conference on 7 June in Glasgow, Klevis Kola Foundation trustees Dr Christopher Hands (KKF Chair) and Dr Jessica Thomas (KKF Child Protection Officer) presented the challenges of referring children to social care for refugee community organisations.  As Refugee Week commences, we would like to highlight this work within the wider community - please take a look at the link below to see the poster of their presentation:

Safeguarding Conference poster

In May volunteers, staff, children and families alike all enjoyed a weekend away camping at Skreens Park in Essex. The weekend was packed full of fun activities for all; pizza making, cake decorating, face painting, trips to the beach, ice cream, bonfires, and games! This was an excellent opportunity for all to enjoy the company of each other, to build new friendships and provide families with quality time to spend together. The weekend also allowed everyone involved to learn new skills and take part in team building, with fun had by all!

Volunteers share their experiences!

Volunteers had excellent stories to share and some of their own highlights. One volunteer Kay spoke of the fun had on the beach, “burying Karmel in the sand” and “Azeezat displaying her excellent baking skills, kneading dough for the pizza making.” A particular moment which caused fun and amusement was, “when Rahama got tired of zorbing and just wanted to be rolled around in the ball instead.”

Cadi, one of the Foundation’s volunteers working on developing the Young Volunteer programme, also spoke of her personal highlights of the camping trip and how it was hugely beneficial to all involved:

It was a great opportunity to get to know the children. I see them every week at After-school Club but we learnt lots of new things about each other. Each of them had a new side or skill they hadn’t had the chance to show before and they really shone in this new environment.  I now know I’ve got a great crew of skilled fire-lighters, street dancers, singers, chicken-catchers, meerkat enthusiasts, story-tellers and pizza chefs to hang out with every week! It’s great because I can base the next term’s activities building on some of these skills.

I really liked that the kids slept out in tents, even if it meant that they woke up at 4.30 because of the sun! We had a delicious breakfast cooked over a fire. Everyone was eager to help out so they all took turns stirring the scrambled egg (essential!) and turning the chicken sausages.  It was good to make something together for the whole group.

My favourite moment was definitely the party. All the groups were together and you could see some great friendships being formed between different ages in those dance circles. Some of the shyest kids came out with the wildest dance moves and some were proper skilled. It was wicked to watch their moves being appreciated and copied by other kids. More dancing. More music. All the time. A girl from my group said it felt like being ‘back in her country’, Jamaica, because everyone was outside dancing and enjoying themselves together.

On the 30th May the Year Group 5/6 After-School Club children visited the British Film Institute as their very own animation was nominated for an award! Volunteers and 15 children attended the trip and were excited to watch their animated film on the big screen and see it win 2nd place in their age group! Three films had been short-listed out of over 50. This was an excellent opportunity for the children to see their animation appreciated by an audience and praised for their hard work, with a trophy, film-making kit and t- shirts to take home! Perhaps they can continue their film-making at club activities…

We wanted to share some of the highlights with you all.

If you have not had a chance to watch the animation please click here.

Staff of KKF show off their culinary skills in the kitchen! Last week was the opportunity for staff members at Klevis Kola to create an American and British themed bake-off, baking British delights of savoury and sweet scones with jam and cream, served with traditional Earl Grey tea, and American blueberry muffins for the Women’s Cooking Class which takes place every Wednesday.  The afternoon was an opportunity for the women who attend to sample traditional British and American baking, build on existing cooking skills, learn new skills and meet with friends in a friendly environment.  This was a perfect opportunity for staff at KKF to return the favour to the women who usually take it in turns to cook tasty dishes from their cultural traditions.

The women thoroughly enjoyed learning new recipes to take home to their families and taking part in the weighing, mixing and baking.  The afternoon was a success with delicious goodies left for all to taste!  For those who would be interested in learning more about the Women’s Cooking Classes, please e-mail Klevis Kola: kleviskola@gmail.com.

An announcement to remind you all that the fantastic animation created by year 5+6 in our After-school Club has been recognised for an award in an award ceremony taking place this Thursday - tomorrow!  This follows an activity in December, during which children took part in an animation workshop ran by Chocolate Productions.  It was an excellent and rewarding experience, giving the children new film-making skills and the opportunity to create their very own animation, complete with dialogue and sound effects!

For all of you who would like to come along and see the results of their hard work, the trip will be happening tomorrow during half-term - 30th May at 11:30- 5:30 at the British Film Institute. Hope to see you there.

Click here if you would like to watch the film again!

We had a beautiful weekend for our group of campers this year! Lots of unpacking to do, but everyone is still smiles from spending three days together this past weekend at Skreens Park, a scouts’ campsite in Essex. More stories and photos to come from our group of volunteers who joined 38 children from our after-school club for a weekend of activities such as dancing, cooking pizzas, pond-dipping and baking cakes!

Youth club ended with a bang when the giant piñata that had been worked on all term was completed and destroyed! Other activities last term included designing and making an original board game, making Chinese lanterns, and attempting to create a short film.

This term, we will continue to expand our culinary skills and have already got off to a good start with delicious home-made lamb burgers.  Other groups are working on making their own puppets and mastering puppetry skills, a weekly news debate, and learning games from around the world. We continue to welcome a number of unaccompanied asylum seeking children, as well as children who are very newly arrived. All of our activities are designed to allow everyone to join in, regardless of English fluency levels.

This week, a grand total of 27 women from the Cooking Project attended a training session run by the Oxford-based organisation Seeds for Change who offer workshops on effective and inclusive teamwork, consensus decision-making and meeting facilitation.

The day started with a creative session in which the women were asked to make an artistic representation of what the group meant to them, and what they saw as its vision. They then worked through a series of group exercises designed to improve listening skills and encourage participation from all the women in group discussions. After a quick lunch the women, from Somalia, Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Yemen, headed back into the training room for some problem-solving exercises, with another interesting workshop on group decision-making. Using examples, they looked at ways in which solutions to disagreements could be reached through imagining the underlying reasons for each party’s point of view. There was just enough time at the end of the session to look at effective ways of conducting meetings – from using the heart-shaped ‘talking stone’ to having a kitty of dried chickpeas as ’speaking currency’.

The women’s visions for the project were inspirational – like the one above – and the training provided a brilliant opportunity for all of the women to really get to think about how they function as a team. And ultimately how, working together, they can develop their catering business.