Local Family Helps Refugees
Aristou’s mum Sadaf came into school to talk to Years 5 and 6 about the refugee crisis. She runs a group called Musafir Collective (Musafir means traveller) and sends volunteers to help in refugee camps in the Greek Islands and northern France.
Musafir Collective helped set up a kitchen which fed 1000 people a day in Calais and also provided woodburning stoves to help families over the winter. Aristou often joins Sadaf on her trips to Calais and has made friends with lots of refugees and volunteers there.
Pupils learned about the history of the current refugee crisis and how it is caused partly by recent problems in Syria but also by conflicts that have been going on for over 30 years in parts of Africa and the Middle East. They also learned about how hard life is in refugee camps and that even though most refugees think that things will calm down in a year or two in their home countries and they will go back, the average amount of time a refugee will spend in a camp is 17 years and many stay much longer! This means that many children will grow up in a refugee camp, without access to schooling or safe places to play.
Sadaf said that one simple way to help refugees is to stay informed about what they are going through. Most of them don’t want charity, they just want to be safe and to be able to go back to school or work and build their own lives. A lot of the refugees Sadaf met were very grateful for the donations the Roche school sent, not just because the things were useful – but, more importantly - because it showed them that people in England care about them.
These photographs show the volunteers outside the warehouse in Calais, dropping off some of the donations, such as honey and cough syrup. There is also a photograph of Aristou with his eight-year-old Iraqi friend, Najm, who is wearing one of the friendship bracelets from The Roche.
