Women For Refugee Women

Objectives of Charity

WFRF empowers women who seek sanctuary in the UK with the confidence and skills to rebuild their lives and face the injustices going through the asylum system. The team works alongside women who have experienced migration, women and anti-racist’s sectors to accomplish equality and to play a leading role in advocating for a humane and just asylum process.

Community Pot Project Name

Women For Refugee Women Community Workclub

Key Project Objectives

The key objectives are to support refugee women with facilitating access to online learning and help them develop the digital skills needed to engage in online learning. Their employability skills are improving this way and they are taught how to complete a job search, CV- building and writing applications. After the first steps, the charity aims to find employability positions and volunteering opportunities in the local area of Islington for the women they help. Increasing the women’s self-esteem and confidence is another thing they want to achieve.

Beneficiaries

The beneficiaries for the project are 28 women. They are refugee seekers mainly from Afghanistan, Iran, East and West Africa. The common denominator is that they all come from war-torn countries. Many of them are also victims of trafficking on their journey to get in the UK.

Volunteers

The team lead the digital workshops, with the help of 2 female volunteers, that were recently recruited. It is worth noting that some women that came to the charity for help are now volunteering themselves in the charity’s projects, such as the Arts and Crafts class. A few of those volunteers are still seeking asylum after arriving in the country 10 years ago.

Projects

The charity has workshops that run for 30 weeks (2 hours per week) and are separated into Beginners and Advanced. In those workshops, the women are taught everything from basic skills including how to open a computer, all the way to researching jobs online, using google, zoom, email and searching for educational classes etc

Other schemes are 1to1 support classes, drop-in classes, Radical knitting class, and Arts and Crafts Class.

It is important to note that the charity also helps women with topping up their mobile phones and in very extreme cases, should it be deemed absolutely necessary, a laptop/tablet might even be bought for a woman to keep for her personal use. Such instances though are very rare as commonly the laptops stay on the premises of the charity for use by the ladies during the workshop hours and one to one.

There have also been rare instances that the charity has purchased phones for the women. In recent times, up to 5 phones were purchased for women who needed them.

In addition, WFRW are partnering with the following organisations to provide help to the women:

Smartworks– an organisation that provides women with clothing for interviews, coaching, soft skills, and the confidence needed for them to go on and succeed in interviews and be employed. Out of the 11 women that were helped by this partnership in the last few months, 3 secured employment.

Crowd– a marketing agency, that helps 15 women from the charity every month, on how to build their cv for work, help them with training and get internship or work across Islington.

Good Things Foundation-an organisation specialising on digital skills support and making the benefits of digital technology more accessible to all. The organisation has provided WFRF with 24 laptops for use during their workshops.