Abstract
The Refugee Women's Association (RWA) aims to assist refugee women to settle down successfully in Britain. It is the first organization of its kind in Britain working with refugee women from all nationalities. A registered charity and a company limited by guarantee, it was initiated in 1993 and was formally launched in 1995.
RWA's objectives are threefold. Firstly, it seeks to empower refugee women through the provision of different services such as advice and guidance in education, training and employment, a mentoring programme and mental health support. We also assist refugee women's groups with their capacity building, so that they can provide better services for individual refugee women in their own community. Secondly, we place refugee women's issues on the agenda of policy makers. And thirdly, we raise public awareness of the needs of refugee women, and of their contribution to the host society.
The Range of RWA Services: Education and Training
We provide advice, guidance and counselling on English Language Courses, entitlement to education, professional re-qualification and assessment of qualifications, access to further and higher education, and help with applications for educational grants from statutory and charitable trusts. We have been running English Language courses since 1994. The courses have been accredited by the London Open College Federation and have been proving extremely popular. An integration Programme was established two years ago to include ESOL, IT and jobsearch, and it advises on CV writing, interview skills, assertiveness and confidence building. We also provide customized training. These personalized courses, perhaps the most innovative part of our programme, offer training in specific skills, thus enabling refugee women to surmount what we have found is the biggest barrier to their finding work, namely obtaining qualifications that will be recognized by an employer. In addition to the skills relevant to the course, the training covers ESOL support, placement with employers, developing portfolios, jobsearch skills, advice, guidance and counselling. We have also been running childcare customized training programmes for refugee areas of London to gain the qualifications, knowledge and skills they needed to become child carers and nursery nurses.
Contact: Ayse Bircan or Roya Ibrahimi
Employment and Job Search
RWA is providing services and undertaking activities in order to support refugee women in gaining employment or work-placement in the following ways: liasing with employers and obtaining information on different job vacancies, help with CV writing, advice on job applications and interview techniques, giving support and advice on issues that may prevent refugee women from entering the job market, such as childcare, housing, welfare benefits, mental health, etc., and providing job search training on a one to one basis.
Mentoring
RWA is running mentoring training programme for unemployed refugees and asylum seekers in partnership with the Africa Education Trust. The training lasts seven weeks, and childcare and travel cost support for participants are provided. This is an accredited (LOCN) programme and involves training refugees on how to mentor and support an unemployed mentee refugee/asylum seeker in the provision of employment, education, welfare, emotional support and referrals to appropriate agencies.
Contact: Jasmina Dimitrijevic
Capacity Building and Partnership Development
This project was set up over three years ago as we experienced the gap in service provision for refugee women's organizations. The project offers advice and guidance on the setting up and running of women's organizations, project development, and training in among other things, financial management, fundraising, roles and responsibilities of the management committee, and equal opportunities. We also produce a bi-monthly newsletter entitled ‘Refugee Women's News’. This forms part of the dissemination of information to, and networking with, refugee women's organizations. In each issue we try to tackle a theme which is relevant to refugee women. Readership has increased by 70% since it was produced three years ago.
Contact: Feride Baycan
Refugee Women's Well being Partnership
This is a partnership of five refugee community organizations, led by the Refugee Women's Association. Other partners included the Iranian Community Centre, the African Women's Welfare Association, the Yemeni Community Association and Imece Turkish and Kurdish Speaking Women's Group.
The aim of the project is to prevent the hospitalization of women and long-term dependency on medication. The project provides one to one crisis intervention and counselling services for individual refugee women. The project also works with agencies to raise awareness about issues affecting refugee women and give them necessary information so that they can provide these women with better mental health support. RWA's mental health workers work with individual outreach workers providing support and training needs, referral sources, encouragement, and reading material.
Contact: RWA
Lobbying
RWA has been actively involved in lobbying for gender guidelines and European Women's Lobby for the development of better policies for refugee women.
Experience of Europe
Apart from receiving funds from Europe we have many years of working in partnership with other European organizations and have been participating in several integration seminars where we have actively promoted refugee women, their needs, aspirations and contributions to the society in which they live.
RWA's Structure
To develop the above activities, RWA has eight staff and a number of volunteers who between them speak six languages and are of five nationalities. All of the management committee members are women and 99% of them, refugees themselves, from five different nationalities. We are funded by European Social Funds, European Regional Development Funds, Single Regeneration Budget (World Class City), Association of London Government, Home Office and a number of UK Charitable Trusts.
RWA's vision
As part of our long-term programme and vision we want to work towards the creation of opportunities for refugee women to be able to settle down well in this society, to find employment and to overcome the obstacles in their achievement through combating racism, sexism and disability in particular.