Newham Refugees and Migrants Forum held this years’ International Refugee Week Festival on Saturday 19th June at the Grassroots Centre/Memorial Park in West Ham with support from Conflict and Change and other organisations in Newham. The theme for the festival was Different Past’s Shared Future. Formally opening the event was Rt. Hon Lyn Brown (MP for West Ham). In her opening remarks, she applauded the efforts of the organisers and commended the resilience of refugees in enduring terrible situations in their country of origin, where they flee to seek sanctuary in Newham.
The Refugee Festival in Newham has been ongoing for many years now as an opportunity to show case refugee culture and bring together different communities in Newham who don’t normally have the chance to meet refugees/asylum seekers. Refugee groups performed on the day to entertain the attendees. There were children’s activities; such as bouncy castle, football, faces painting, henna painting etc. Also, different organisations had stalls at the festival displaying the services they offer to the community. Attendees participated in a special quiz session as part of their simple acts during Refugee week. The quiz helped to raise awareness of refugee issues and some people won attractive prizes.
A mini- conference was held with speakers from the Refugee Council, TELCO and End Child Detention. Amongst the speakers was the CEO of the Refugee Council, Donna Covey who opined that Refugees
don’t flee to the UK as a matter of choice but to seek sanctuary and that a recent survey showed that Refugees coming to UK do not have any idea of the country they are coming to or the opportunities available, rather their concern is primarily to flee from persecution, human rights abuses or civil war contrary to what is portrayed by far right groups. The speakers’ contributions were followed by a Q & A session facilitated by Conflict and Change. The conference offered an update on the various campaigns such as the governments’ plans to end child detention which affect refugee families coming to the UK and also the strangers in to citizen’s campaign and Living wage.
Despite the rain on the day, about 300 people attended the event and many had an enjoyable time at the park.
