NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2024
As Autumn starts to take hold and the leaves fall rather earlier than usual, I trust you have all had a good break over the summer – although I appreciate that recently it has been a busy time for some of our volunteers as during the past few months several new families from Afghanistan have been resettled in the Harrogate and Knaresborough district.
Eight families have also been placed in Ripon and in May we hosted a lunchtime gathering to bring together our established families with all the newcomers to give them all a chance to get to know one another. It was a very happy event at the Friends’ Meeting House with plenty of opportunity for the adults to chat while the children were well entertained with games, disco and face-painting.
In June, as usual, we celebrated Refugee Week. This time we joined forces with Harrogate Film Society, presenting two films relevant to the occasion. The first was a delightful cartoon from Ukraine which was thoroughly enjoyed by a large audience many of whom were Ukrainian. The second film was The Old Oak, a Ken Loach film telling the story of the arrival of a Syrian refugee family placed in an impoverished former mining village in County Durham. Their arrival was not well received by many villagers and the film documents their slow but happily successful integration into the society, thanks in no small measure to the sharing of food. To reinforce this simple but effective message we provided middle eastern snacks for the audience at the end of the screening. A wonderful bonus that evening was the appearance of the main star of the film, Dave Turner, who spoke with great enthusiasm about the making of the film, about Ken Loach, and about his own unexpected rise to stardom from being a retired firefighter! We are very grateful to Harrogate Film Society for making these two events possible and for raising ÂŁ1000 for us in the process.
We are supporting two valuable initiatives:
Before the summer break Ivana Gardner ran a sewing group for refugees from various backgrounds. This was a successful venture allowing time for chatting and thus improving English skills as well as offering the opportunity to use and develop skills. I am pleased to report that Ivana will be starting a new session later this month.
The Saturday Ukrainian School opened in June and will be continuing this term at the Acorn Centre, overseen by Elina Kyrychok. This is an important venture to help the young Ukrainians living here to keep up with their mother-tongue as they tend to become more fluent in English, and familiar with the English school curriculum.
We have been pleased to welcome several new volunteers recently but we still need more because of the influx of new families so if you know anyone who might be interested please give them a nudge and ask them to email [email protected] for information.
Looking ahead:
Saturday November 9th 2.30 – 4.30 pm Friends’ Meeting House : we will be running a training session. We would very much like all volunteers to attend as we shall be addressing some important issues such as safeguarding and cultural matters which we all need to be familiar with.
(Please note that this meeting was originally scheduled for November 2nd but we have made it a week later as it was pointed out that we should avoid half-term)
Also, we need to ensure that we follow a clear policy on DBS Certification for all volunteers. Certification is now being dealt with by our treasurer, Dennis Brickles. If you do not have an up to date certificate (i.e under 3 years old) then please contact him ([email protected]) and he will arrange for a new one to be applied for. (Cost covered by HKDoS of course)
AGM: This will be held on Wednesday 27th November at St Robert’s Club. Please make a note of the date in your diary. We hope to have contributions from our refugee families and we will update you on support from North Yorkshire Council.
Thank you to all our volunteers for all you do; thank you for reading this and we look forward to seeing you soon!