Refugee Week

June sees our focus move towards Refugee Week (15 to 21 June) and World Refugee Day (20 June), which are great opportunities to celebrate refugees and stand in solidarity with refugees. Refugee Week is the world’s largest arts and culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. Doesn’t that inspire us all to get involved?  The theme this year is Courage.  To find out more about Refugee Week nationally and globally, please use this link: https://refugeeweek.org/

In Birmingham, there’s a free Refugee Week Takeover at the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) in Cannon Hill Park on Saturday 20 June from 12.30pm to 5pm featuring a lineup of music, arts, and world-class performances celebrating the contributions of refugee and migrant communities.   Restore will be staffing a stand, so please come and say “Hi!”

Also on World Refugee Day, Birmingham City of Sanctuary Committee, Asylum Matter and Restore are organising a Refugees Welcome March to show solidarity with refugees. This is a great opportunity to publicly give positive messages about refugees and to show refugees that there are people who welcome and support them. It’s a celebratory event and not a protest! We will meet outside Christ Church Selly Park, (953 Pershore Road, B29 7PS) at 11.30am on Saturday 20 June and then walk to the MAC ready for the start of the Festival.  Please share the event with others, but please don’t share it on social media as we don’t want to attract the attention of far-right groups.

Hot on the tail of Refugee Week, is the Restore Annual Celebration on Wednesday 1^st July at St Martin in the Bulling Church  at 7.15pm. This is a wonderful opportunity to gather together the Restore community of asylum seekers, refugees, befrienders, supporters, Management Committee members, Trustees and partners from other organisations supporting refugees. We will showcase our work, there will be lots of opportunities to mix and meet people and we’ll round off with refreshments.

But before all of that, we are running our next Training Day for anyone who wants to find out more about refugee issues and/or befriending with Restore, on Saturday 13 June from 9.45am to 4pm at St John’s Church, Vivian Road, Harborne. Please click here for more information or to sign up. https://www.restore-uk.org/news/next-befriending-training-day-13th-june/