Refugee Support and Education Services offered by ICCF
 

Project details:

 

The project is a response to the lack of support available refugees mentors refugees communities living in the London borough of barking and Dagenham.

Peer mentoring will be carried out by adults aged 25 years + recruited from among diverse refugee’s local residents and looks at new ways to support each other.

Our surveys confirms that local refugees groups find it quite hard to find out what is  going on in their local area and that suits their options and individual choices.

It’s very important to understand what that role is.

We have also learnt about the various organisations who can help; so that when someone wants additional information I can point them in the right direction.”

How does the project work?

We meet once a month usually in the evening. Sometimes we’ll have a workshop, other times we work in pairs and report back to the group anything we feel is useful for everyone to hear.”

We feel that we need to do something to help other people who are in a similar situation to those we so familiar with in our work and have not had enough support. This project is a great way of doing that.

What do you think are the best things to have come out of the project?

“A sense of community involvement. Giving individuals the chance to help others, to make a difference in a big way and be part of something bigger. And getting over the message that we can achieve anything.”

• improved self-confidence and self esteem,
• increased motivation,
• broadening horizons and experience and
• raised achievements and aspirations.

For the mentor:

• immense satisfaction from helping another person grow
• increased self-awareness

The drop in one stop shop wills a focal point to:

• Make new friends
• Broaden various local refugees group’s  life experience
• Learn new skills
• Develop personal career and potential
• unleash hidden talents and use existing skills into good practice
• Be mentored and access an opportunity to contribute to the current vibrant local area development plan.
• Get more involved in training to work as a volunteer with various voluntary and statutory sectors organisations.
• Learn how challenge contradicting stereotype and racial abuse threats currently engineered by the BNP  
• Refugees’ clients and services users from where to make self assessment and acquire knowledge to make positive choices. Empower individual refugees with development of interpersonal and communication skills.
• social integration life within Barking and Dagenham society
• Refugees and other local services users to have a conducive safe environment where they can freely talk personal issues have fun meet new people and make new friends.
• Trainee mentors a positive vibes to mentor other people from similar life experiences.
• It helped refugees’ communities to achieve their goals for what they wanted to do after they finished mentoring training programme.
• Mentors/mentees will build relationship to give them as much of an opportunity to learn as the mentee."
• Refugees’ mentors will gain knowledge to help peers in a critical point of their life and personal development, meet people from different backgrounds, talk about problems and various cultural issues, share knowledge and life experiences.

Most of our target groups have been in the UK for 6-7 years but have not made friends since. The project will therefore act as a cohesive opportunity to break these identified common barriers found among barking and Dagenham refugees’ communities.

 Outcome

• Trainee mentors will achieve a better sense of belonging and feel valuable within their local communities.
• Thy will increase in confidence to access and reccognise available opportunities within the mainstream services.
• Satisfaction of sharing their achievement experience and passing it on to someone else. 

We feel it is important for me to communicate with people like me or in a similar situation."

For organisations:

• development of staff skills
• instilling a feel good factor in staff
• positive publicity
• shared learning

E-mentoring

Traditionally mentoring has been carried out face-face. New technologies are facilitating new methods of mentoring. Email, chartrooms and electronic forms are used to enable mentor and mentee to communicate with each other and with the scheme's coordinators. Software is often incorporated which monitors the progress of the mentee and the content of communications between adult mentors and young mentees.

Peer

Carried out between people of similar age, status and circumstance. Support and development is often a collaborative two way process between the mentoring pair. 

The mentoring element involves learning mentors, volunteer mentors and peer mentoring.

Project takes a holistic approach to boosting its students achievement level.  

Mentoring is not just left to adults, pupils are also involved as peer mentors. Older pupils have run lunchtime drop-in sessions for younger pupils. Year 8 pupils provide support to Year 7 pupils, by acting as a friend to talk. This matching of Year 8 to Year 7 pupils means that every year 7 child has access to additional support during what can often be a tricky transitional year.

Learning and volunteer mentors provide one-one mentoring support for pupils. To enable them to do this mentors receive extensive training with an initial five day training course and further training and support throughout the year. Once trained the mentors spend one hour a week with their mentee over a full academic year. Mentoring is target based and focuses primarily on the pupil’s achievements at school. There are a broad range of circumstances which may lead to a pupil receiving mentoring support and mentors are carefully matched with their mentee to enable them to provide the best possible support

There are many different types of mentoring schemes. So, mentoring can mean different things to different people but in general terms a mentor is someone who:

• listens
• offers encouragement
• acts as a role model
• discusses possible solutions to difficulties
• shares their experience and knowledge
• helps another to stay on track and reach their goals
• stays independent – does not get to personal

They are not:

• a teacher
• a substitute parent
• a source of finance
• a counsellor
• a social worker

The project will provides a holistic participatory weekly three hourly mentoring training programme in the next six months. At the initial meeting mentor and mentee discuss objectives and produce an action plan. The results of subsequent meetings are recorded in a diary of outcomes and action points. We retain a close link with the companies and observe some of the meetings to ensure that interaction and progress is satisfactory for all involved. Likewise, we observe mentor training sessions to ensure quality and relevance. In fact the training package has been redeveloped following feedback from our mentors

Volunteering 4 Employment Skills is a new Volunteer Service project aimed at introducing long-term unemployed people into volunteering with a view to helping them to develop skills and knowledge to gain employment. It is a tailored service offering individual support and planning to its users including self-awareness and confidence building, key skills training; basically anything that enables and encourages their first step into volunteering. We will offer as much or as little support as is needed to accompany volunteers to organisations, maintain contact via telephone and face-to-face, liase with the organisation to check progress, issues etc. We hope volunteers will stay on the project for 3-6 months, although some will stay much longer, when they will be offered mentoring for future advancement i.e. access job-searching, c.v. writing etc.

All clients must be unemployed and we are particularly interested in supporting ex-offenders, homeless, refugees, drug and alcohol misusers and lone parents although anyone who needs support to increase their employability skills are encouraged to contact us.

Mentors will provide  a one-on-one relationship building among peers  conducted at our one stop shop dro in centre.

Mentors support, encourage, motivate and guide their mentees as they seek to achieve their goals in education, employment and integration.

• one-on-one
• mentoring relationships with local volunteer mentors. Mentors support, encourage, and
• motivate their mentees as they seek to achieve their goals in language, employment,
• education, and socio-cultural integration. After training, mentors and mentees commit to
• spending a minimum of five hours a month together for a period of one year. The aim is
• to help mentees settle into a new life in the UK and to enable mentors to gain a better
• understanding of the lives of refugees, building bridges between communities.
• enhancing their integration, and often
• forming strong mutually beneficial friendships.
• help with their English, with finding
• a job, and someone to help familiarise them with their local area
• Mentees were made to feel better able to interact

Key activities

Mentors will assist refugees groups and individuals to access local mainstream services,

Finding jobs, applying for places for their children at local schools, linking them with local voluntary sector organisations to volunteer, engaging with strangers and attempt to make friends

Mentors played a crucial role in helping to rebuild refugees self-esteem

• refugees are faced with demeaning attitude from  institutions like the BNP
• refugee mentors will work with their refugee mentees to develop short-term attainable goals that could be later built upon to improve life conditions and guarantee a sustainable future.

Mentors be trained and equipped with skills to help those with CV writing and the completion of application forms problems especially those whom English is not their first language.

The project will recruit local refugees residents with a wealth of experience to establish social contacts, specifically earmarked for refugees living in the borough without their families. The mentoring programme will also help to combat

Isolation, providing regular feedback aims to help refugees integrate, while giving mentors - who come from all walks of life - the chance to make new friends, learn about other cultures and develop their own skills.

The target group is adult refugees who have skills and experiences and have settled in the UK with a work permit yet continue to experience barriers to employment. The programme focuses on empowering and supporting adult refugees to break these barriers into employment.

Through a mentoring relationship people build new networks, friendships and confidence. They may meet over a drink, visit a gallery or explore the city. They can practice English, access training, volunteering and employment opportunities or seek advice from someone of the same professional or working background.

Mentoring training will enable refugees’ participants to:

• feel  less stressed
• build their self-esteem
• make new friends
• get through a racial harassments and stereotypes difficult period in life

Mentoring training will gives refugees a chance to use your current skills and develop new ones, acquire new interests, meet people, become active in bringing about social change, and to get involved.

Doing voluntary work should benefit you. It could give you:

• Enjoyment and personal satisfaction
• A chance to meet people and get involved in your community.
• Work experience and training
• A chance to use and learn new skills
• A change to your normal routine
• Recognition and a chance to build up your confidence

For more information on future education and training courses offered through ICCF, contact us today.

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