AUTUMN NEWSLETTER

OCTOBER 2023

The TWR Summer Picnic and Produce Show 

Now autumn is well underway all our projects are back running at full steam.  English Conversation in Taunton continues to be well-attended on both mornings every week.  Our current mix of nationalities who join us regularly range from Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Yemen, Sudan and Egypt.  This provides us with a rich seam to mine for new recipes!  Yes, the TWR Calendar for 2024 is in production.  With many of us still looking around for new things to do with the last of our courgettes you might try stuffing them with lamb, rice and spices.  Check out Safa’s September Mahshi recipe.  Others still to come from our 2023 calendar include Syrian Sfihas: two recipes from Afghanistan – Lamb Koftas and Rice Cookies; Molokhia from Sudan and Konafa from Palestine.

Along with the TWR Calendar 2024 we will be selling our Christmas Cards again soon.  Kotob is currently busy painting something for us.  We will be advertising them in due course. 

Our Ukrainian English Classes are back with Level 1 and Level 2 options.  We are very grateful to Somerset Council who have decided to fund the project in its entirety for the whole second year.  We could not have reached this happy state without the initial generous support from Somerset Supports Ukraine who provided 70% of our costs for the first year of classes.  Katya continues to teach everyone most effectively, with great progress being made by many students.  And the biscuits continue to be eaten with surprising speed. It became clear that we needed to offer something for the best students who had progressed through our classes but still wanted to polish their English.  We have just started Advanced English Conversation where they can speak with a variety of native voices to improve still further.  We are having a lot of fun exploring our language and are continually surprised at how confusing it can be, especially when we litter our sentences with idioms.  Recently we were a little short of volunteers, but that didn’t mean that the volunteers were not particularly tall, as someone inferred. 

Our outreach work in the local hotel housing people seeking asylum continues.  We now have volunteers who are teaching English to small groups.  There is a team who are running an English Conversation group, which is quite tricky considering the wide range of ability, but it’s fun all the same. And we also have a team of befrienders who go in once a week to meet residents, chat and help them with a broad range of issues.  

If you would like to help us, we are always looking for knitting wool, fabric and sewing accessories, sewing machines and clean, unlocked, smartphones. 

 Last month we welcomed Bozena Wierzchleyska as a new Trustee to the Board, and both she and Chris Tait have been appointed as Training Co-ordinators.  Both have been volunteering at the North Petherton Coffee and Conversation, and now at English classes in the hotel.  They will gradually take on all aspects of the training and preparation of our volunteers – both new and existing – as Lynne Mayers steps down in the New Year. 

Meanwhile, with an increasing number of volunteers, and more complex volunteering, our new Volunteer Management Team has been swinging into action. Many of you will already have been contacted by David Moy, to arrange an informal review.  

The Volunteer Management Team consists of:

  • Volunteer Management Trustees: Ali Bachelor, Esther Checketts (welcomer), Simon Forrester
  • Administrator and Safeguarding Officer: Lou Froud
  • Volunteer Co-ordinator: David Moy
  • Social Events Organiser: Hannah Banfield
  • Training Co-ordinator: Lynne Mayers

We hope that by offering this increased level of on-going support and encouragement, everyone will realise how much we appreciate their time given so freely and generously. 

 DON’T FORGET WE STILL HAVE PLACES ON OUR NEXT PREPARATION COURSE 11TH AND 25TH NOVEMBER IF ANYONE IS CONSIDERING BECOMING A VOLUNTEER .

We have our first TWR Wildlife Photographer 2023 winner.  This great photo was taken by one of the asylum seekers on a visit to Southampton.  Our judges whittled down the many entries to a final three.  Then we decided the overall winner by popular vote.  We hope you agree that this is a rather good image of seaside Britain!  Our judges included Kotob and Ingrid.  They appeared to have had a good time working through all the images together.   

Alongside the Photography competition we had our inaugural Summer Produce Show with a satisfying number of vegetables and flowers on display.  The Syrian allotment-holders had by far and above the best vegetables on the day and took home many prizes.  The cake competition was also fiercely contested amongst all our cooks.  We now know who are the ones to beat next August!  

Our top judge was Adam Alexander, who had distributed many free seeds to the refugee gardeners in the spring.  He was ably assisted by one of the asylum seekers and the two of them tasted their way around the room but were both a bit taken aback by the ferocity of one particular chilli. The whole event was part of our Summer Picnic Gathering where over 90 of us got together for the day. 

But our work at TWR is not just about social gatherings and community…  

 At the end of September TWR signed a letter written in response to Suella Braverman’s speech delivered in Washington DC.  One of the authors was Raawiyah Rifath who is an Advisor to the TWR Trustees.  You can read it here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfvfwTlAvhlpqM1CRTsX6FO-_-SvtH0ewTl-qpPoFPxVbrbjw/viewform   

 The Grants Sub-Committee recently welcomed Amanda Boyd.  She is now working hard alongside Ann Bernard and Georgina Naylor assisting Robin and Kate with the onerous job of identifying and then applying for money to keep us in good financial health.  Their expertise is reaping rewards.  We have received money from various sources – an initial grant from Garfield Weston for core costs, Taunton Town granted us money for English Conversation & Coffee, and Somerset Council has paid for Ukrainian English Lessons as mentioned.  Our thanks to each of these funding organisations. 

We should also mention the Society of Friends, Taunton Branch, who continue to let us hire their beautiful Quaker Meeting House at a discounted rate.  They have done this for years now and we really appreciate their quiet support.  With the approach of the school summer holidays we decided to continue to meet once a week to offer something constructive to do for the asylum seekers from the hotel.  The Friends took the decision to offer their room for no charge.  How kind they are. Not only were our volunteers very keen to turn up, but also to take the lead organising a couple of guided walks into the countryside around Taunton.  These were very popular. The only sticky moment came when the temptations of the blackberries in the hedgerow slowed everyone down just as we were in a field full of cows and a big bull. 

 

Meet Amina, a Kurdish lady, who has lived in Taunton for 4 years now and is already herself working with TWR as an interpreter and aiming to become a volunteer.  Here she is with the Volunteer Team.  Her’s is a fascinating story.  She only had 3 years of education in Syria between the ages of 7-10 years old.  When she learns a language, she does it completely by ear as the written words on the page do not help her in any way.  Her mother-tongue is Turkish and, being raised in Syria, she picked up Arabic from the community outside the home.  Upon marrying her husband, she had to learn Kurdish.  A knowledge of the Sorani language helped her function in the shops and markets.  And now she’s done it all over again picking up ‘a little English’ in her words.  When the family were resettled in Taunton the pandemic hit and for the first 2 years, they became stranded in their house and very isolated.  But since then, she has gone from strength to strength, making friends with her neighbours and other parents at the school gate.  She is at the stage where her understanding is better than her spoken responses, but that does not deter her.  She was brave enough to help with our TWR Preparation Courses by speaking to new volunteers about the difficulties she and her family have faced trying to settle into life in Somerset.  Leading on from that she is about to attend the Preparation Course herself to become a fully–fledged Volunteer.  She is already helping us to communicate with the asylum seekers, translating for people from various countries, which is a tremendous help to everyone.  Moreover, she has a flair for cooking and is contributing again to our TWR Calendar 2024.  We are grateful to her in many ways.  Thank you Amina. 

Whilst we are thanking people for their help with communications, we must also mention Monir, an Iranian lady, who speaks a several languages from further east.  Farsi is her first language which has similarities to Dari which she also speaks, along with Azari, a language similar to Turkish.  Her English is excellent, she speaks French and Nepali too. We can’t tell you how many times she has helped ease communications between people, even finding common words to use with Kurds and Syrians. When we need to explain something clearly, we turn to Monir! Her most helpful role being to ensure that our English words are being comprehended by people from Afghan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey.  We are increasingly in awe of those who can master several languages. It is one of the most wonderful skills and makes connecting with people from across the world possible. Thank you too, Monir. 

Several volunteers have been to the cinema to watch Ken Loach’s film The Old Oak and reported favourably on it.  For those of you, like me, who have missed it first time around, it is going to be shown at the Crowcombe Film Club at 7.30pm on Sunday 12th November. 

Finally, the Assistant Coach of the Afghanistan cricket team, Raees Ahmadzai, was speaking on the radio this week, after their historic victory over England in the Cricket World Cup.  He said something that really struck me since it is a perfect way to describe everything we strive to do in TWR.  “Refugee life – there was nothing, no facilities, no sport, not much education – it was a very simple life, or maybe a below 0 percentage life…no family support”  Little by little we try to move that percentage point in a positive direction so that life becomes just a bit more tolerable for the people we meet. 

 Thank you again for your continued good will and support of our charity, Taunton Welcomes Refugees.