This project was aimed at helping refugees and asylum seekers to improve their language and digital skills.
The language workshop enabled 15 Spanish-speaking asylum seekers and 25 volunteers who are currently students of Spanish to enhance their confidence and communication skills. We collaborated with The Vavengers, African Community Centre, (ACC), Changing the Narrative of VAWG, Brynhyfryd Primary School and the wellness provider Med.Land for this workshop.
To develop digital skills, we collaborated with Unity in Diversity (UiD) and Digital Communities Wales (DCW) to offer digital skills workshops for 10 refugees and asylum seekers. The project provided UiD with six digital devices for community use in order to promote continuing skills development beyond the end of the project. The relationship with DCW is also continuing, with ongoing training being provided to UiD members.
The project supplied UiD volunteers with access to training to enable them to serve the asylum seeker/ refugee community more effectively.
The two projects delivered:
- Essential digital skills workshops (device usage, online shopping, communication tools, and online safety): 4 initial sessions
- Six devices for UiD to use to further develop IT skills within the community
- Volunteer training for working with refugees and asylum seekers (6 people)
- Training in food safety for refugees/ asylum seekers/ charity volunteers (8 people)
- Student/Asylum seekers mentoring sessions: 20 sessions
- Asylum seekers master classes: 5 sessions
- Wellness and wellbeing sessions: 4 sessions
- Educational sessions: 5 sessions
Highlights:
- The impact of the digital skills training extends beyond the initial workshops. DCW are training Digital Ambassadors within the UiD community, ensuring that the benefits of the workshops persist through ongoing support and training.
- Eight volunteers from within the refugee and asylum seeker community are receiving training in food hygiene, allowing them not only to serve UiD in a safe manner, but to develop skills and earn qualifications that will enable them to work when they are legally permitted to do so.
- The six devices have broadened the type of training and workshops UiD are able to offer. For example, librarians from the public library came to UiD to provide training on accessing online library resources.
- The asylum seeker community reported a new sense of worthiness; this was mentioned regarding the involvement in the project as the contact with students provided opportunities to show and gain knowledge, but these positive comments were particularly focused on the masterclasses.
- Changing the Narrative to offer ongoing sessions for the asylum seekers, particularly focused on mental health and wellbeing.
- In Brynhyfryd Primary School our student mentors worked in the community with Hispanic children providing reading support and the opportunity to continue offering this support is welcome.
- Swansea University students benefitted from work opportunities that will contribute to experience on their CVs, improving their employability
