Blog

11 Nov – Together with Refugees

From Leeds Asylum Seekers’ Support Network

We wanted to share this amazing initiative put together by the Together With Refugees campaign, entitled “A Fair New Plan For Refugees”.

Below you can find an excerpt from their recent newsletter.

A fair new plan for refugees - photo of a group of people holding placards and banners

“Dear friends,

With a new UK Government and Parliament, we have a real opportunity to secure a fair new plan for refugees. To do this we need to show politicians of all parties that the majority of people in the UK want a kinder, fairer and more effective approach. We know the Government is planning on introducing legislation on refugees so now is a crucial time to build a connection with your local MP – including asking them to sign the new Fair Begins Here Parliamentary Promise.

Earlier this week we shared a toolkit and resources – including template letters, press releases and social media content – to help you engage your local MP.

The first step to building a connection with your MP is writing to them to highlight all the great work being done to support refugees in your community, explain why we need a fair new plan for refugees and request a meeting.”

Carol Burns, volunteer at LASSN, says,

‘As a volunteer English teacher of asylum seekers and refugees I welcome the new Together with refugees campaign. Too often the current asylum system retraumatises people who have already been through a very difficult time. It should be fair and compassionate’

The orange heart represents compassion for people fleeing war and persecution. Inspired by the refugee nation flag, and the colours of a lifebelt, the heart symbolises hope and kindness. By recreating and sharing the heart on your social media channels you can show your support for refugees.

Join the call for a kinder, fairer and more effective approach to supporting refugees by sending a message on social media using the hashtags #WhoWeAre and #TogetherWithRefugees.

If you like what you’ve read here, you can follow the initiative, or contact Together with Refugees ‘via info@asylum-reform-initiative.org.uk‘

Together with refugees written in and orange heart

11th November 2024 |

06 Nov – 16th November NJPN Networking Day: The Real Living Wage

Saturday 16th November

The National Justice & Peace Network (NJPN) brings together J&P activists from across the Dioceses of England and Wales with in-person and online events focussing on various social justice issues.

The Diocese of Leeds Justice & Peace Commission is delighted to be hosting this meeting on their behalf at Wheeler Hall, Leeds Cathedral.

There will be a focus on poverty in the UK and, in the particular, the Real Living Wage.

Exploring UK poverty and the real living wage

A keynote speaker will be Sara Bryson. Sara is Assistant Director (North) for Citizens UK. Citizens Organising brings together civil society (institutions of education, faith, and community) to act together for power, social justice and the common good. Citizens UK is perhaps best known for the Living Wage Movement bringing millions of pounds in additional wages to low paid workers and lifting hundreds of thousands of families out of working poverty.

After lunch there will be a panel discussion. the panel will include:

Graham Brownlee – Senior Organiser for Leeds Citizens

Paul Coleman – ‘Church at the Margins’ lead at Leeds Church Institute

Luke Denison – Debt Advice Team leader at the Leeds (York Road) SVP centre.

Tom Chigbo – previously worked for PTX impact and was the Senior Organiser for Leeds Citizens.

In addition there will also be the opportunity to meet with J&P activists from across the Catholic Dioceses of England and Wales and find out what is going on in other dioceses.

These relaxed events are often an inspiration for further action : ‘if they can do that there we can do it here.‘

ALL are welcome to come along to this free event.

Teas, coffee and water are provided throughout the event but please bring something to have for lunch.

It’s a rare opportunity and Leeds is easily accessible by public transport from most areas of the country. Wheeler Hall is less than a ten minute walk from Leeds City Station.

What’s stopping you from registering?

8th November 2024 |

01 Nov – Conference of Mayors for Peace

by Sean Morris, Commission member

Earlier this week I helped a colleague in organising the Executive Conference of Mayors for Peace held in Manchester. The conference is held every two years with Manchester hosting as a Vice President.

On Sunday there was a walk of the Manchester Peace Trail. Manchester is a famous city with a long history. It was the world’s first industrial city, where many people came to work in the new cotton mills and factories in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is also famous for people taking a leading role in the struggle against injustice and for peace, for the good of Manchester and the wider world. The Manchester City Centre Peace Trail highlights some of their stories. To discover the amazing people and incredible events, celebrated in the streets of Manchester, see the Manchester Peace Trail Website.

Mayors standing with banner reading 'Mayors for Peace' in English and Chinese

On Monday the opening commemoration event took place at the Manchester Arena Glade of Light memorial. The names of the 22 who died were read out by the Dean of Manchester Cathedral and poems by Lemn Sissay and Tony Walsh were read out by the Lord Mayor of Manchester and Councillor Erinma Bell. The Mayors of Manchester, Hiroshima and Nagasaki laid flowers and a minute’ silence was held.

The conference discussed the Mayors for Peace PX Vision, peace education, the upcoming Nobel Peace Prize ceremony with Nidon Hidankyo, and preparing for the 80th anniversary of the atomic weapon attacks in 2025.

Group of people standing outside facing a mayor, reading from sheets of paper. It is raining

There was also a European Chapter and a UK & Ireland Chapter meeting. At the UK & Ireland meeting, Mayor Matsui outlined the PX Vision and a recent visit to Dublin where he spoke to both houses of the Irish Parliament, to a meeting at which 16 new Irish Mayors signed to join Mayors for Peace and he met President Higgins.

Mayor Matsui also met pupils from Chorlton High School who have a gingko tree and they talked to him about it. Manchester now has school links with both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Manchester Museum, who have a Hiroshima exhibit of melted glass and paper cranes, was visited by the delegates. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has provided new panels on peace cranes which were unveiled at Manchester Museum.

Finally, a trip to Old Trafford where Mayor Matsui met Manchester United officials. Talks were held to create peace links between the club and Hiroshima’s J League club, Sanfrecce Hiroshima.

1st November 2024 |

05 Oct – ‘Let us Dream’ workshop at LTU

On 2nd October SPARK held a sustainability event at Leeds Trinity University in partnership with the new Director of Sustainability and the Director of Catholic Mission.
A key message from Katie Clegg, Director of Sustainability at the university, was that sustainability will only be achieved if it involves everyone at the university – not just staff looking after the fabric of the buildings.

To facilitate this workshop we had invited John Paul de Quay of the Ecological Conversion Network in Arundel & Brighton diocese. John Paul helped set up and runs the ‘Ecological Conversion Group’. (It’s worth taking a look at their website https://theecg.org/ )

The ’Let us Dream’ bit is part of a quote from Pope Francis asking us to imagine what our future might be like in our parishes and educational institutions once we have achieved net zero carbon emissions.
In small groups, everyone was asked to discuss the questions John Paul posed about net zero and each group had to produce a visual representation of what they thought Leeds Trinity University might be like once net zero had been attained.

For an evaluation we asked people to pick between 2 and 5 words from a list to describe how they felt about the event. The majority chose to describe the session as interesting, inspiring and exciting! Other descriptions included thought provoking, relaxed and fun. Who knows what it might lead to? The photographs below give a flavour of what the event was like, and some of the final artwork.

17th October 2024 |

01 Oct – SPARK World Migrant Day event

On Sunday 29 September, SPARK organised a partnership event with Caritas Catholic Care. To celebrate the World Day for Migrants and Refugees’ We heard the stories of some of the people who have been helped to re-settle in the Yorkshire area with help from Caritas Catholic Care. They are an official Government partner for the Syrian Re-settlement scheme, which, in 2015, guaranteed resettlement for 20,000 Syrian refugees.
Sue Parsons from Caritas Catholic Care took a few minutes to explain how the Resettlement Scheme works. It involves both direct help from Caritas Catholic Care and the building of a community of people around those being resettled.
We then heard directly from some of those who had been resettled in Pateley Bridge and in Ripon. Their route to the UK involved travelling out of Syria to Jordan prior to getting to the UK. However, it took a long time to sort out papers: it was much more arduous than just getting into Jordan and hopping on a UK-bound plane. They did not speak of the hardships they had to endure along the way – one merely described his time in Jordan as ‘difficult’. However, it had been deliberately left to the refugees themselves to decide what they wanted to share.

They were all clearly delighted to now have a more settled existence. A couple from Pateley Bridge (Huda & Mohamed) are starting up a catering business serving Syrian food (called ‘Road to Damascus’). They are already supplying one of the cafes in Pateley Bridge and we became another of their early customers. We asked for some typical Syrian food that could be eaten without additional cooking or heating. They provided a feast!
The food provided a good accompaniment to people chatting more informally and asking questions to find out more both from Sue Parsons and from the refugees themselves.

1st October 2024 |

30 Sep – SPARK goes to Mexico!

Matty Maslen, a longstanding member of the SPARK community, has spent the last week in Mexico. This was only possible with considerable financial support from a number of organisations – including SPARK Social Justice. However, he wasn’t sunning himself or visiting the remains of ancient civilisations!

Matty was part of a group attending the 19th World Summit of Nobel Laureates through the Peacejam organisation. Here is what he had to say about this in his LinkedIn post:

Or… read it directly on Linked In

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7244408782099742721/?actorCompanyId=104740498

30th September 2024 |

24 Sep – Racism: An Agenda for Change

By John Duffy, Commission Member

Last weekend I attended the 40^th anniversary conference of the Catholic Association for Racial Justice (CARJ). After welcome and introductions by Yogi Sutton (Chair of CARJ) and Bishop John Arnold, Alison Lowe gave a keynote speech, describing her own journey and background, and describing aspects of her work as West Yorkshire’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime. She has worked to overcome police resistance to the recommendations of the McPherson Report, and to accepting the concept of institutional racism.

She has introduced a Race Action Plan to examine and challenge police internal culture, to involve police and different communities in conversation and engagement – one of the benefits of this was the successful de-escalation of the Harehills riot, where damage was limited, and the police personnel withdrew from their visible presence to allow community leaders to restore calm and reassurance. She said that it is significant that no July unrest occurred in West Yorkshire, because of the police force’s relationships with communities, and a greater confidence from people in communities coming together to demand justice and fairness.

Fr Phil Sumner (who is the parish priest at Our Lady & St Patrick in Oldham – where the conference was held) quoted Pope Francis on combatting racism: progress is not as real or as definite as we think. For example, state and church have both responded to the July riots by stressing immigration, rather than leading on dealing with inequalities and scapegoating.

He led us through an Agenda for Change, with the mnemonic

BIAS: Belonging/Information/Accompaniment/Strategy

Belonging: In Fratelli Tutti para 53, Pope Francis has written We forget that “there is no worse form of alienation than to feel uprooted, belonging to no one. A land will be fruitful, and its people bear fruit and give birth to the future, only to the extent that it can foster a sense of belonging among its members, create bonds of integration between generations and different communities, and avoid all that makes us insensitive to others and leads to further alienation”.

In The Ungrateful Refugee, Dina Nayeri says that Allowing newcomers to affect you on your native soil, to change you is an enriching experience and he has worked to ensure that welcoming people into parish life must not only involve them in welcoming, reading and other ministries, but changes the fabric of the building, so that when they come in, they see something of themselves. He has installed new stained glass windows with African and Filipino imagery. Our welcome must go beyond theme nights, must stop seeing incomers as exotic, but welcome the changes they bring to liturgy and parish life.

Information: We must educate ourselves about such things as institutional racism, structural racism, critical race theory, stereotypes, racist trolls, claims to be “colour blind’, stereotyping, and the unconscious power of established groups. Accuracy is important, and we must be clear what we say and what we mean – a claim to uphold “British values” – vague and undefined – makes others into the problem.

Accompaniment: Simply, we must stand alongside the different communities in the Church and beyond in our struggle for equality.

Strategy: Too often we focus on the white experience as the place that holds solutions to racism, rather than listening to and learning from our sisters and brothers who face this daily. Each Diocese should adopt a Racial Justice Strategy which must include a process of consultation, an audit, a plan of action and a timetable. White Catholics must be prepared to do something uncomfortable by allowing people to be themselves, and move from hand-wringing about racism to hand-holding, standing up and alongside in solidarity.

CARJ is facing a loss of funding and may launch a crowd-funding appeal: a message from Yogi Sutton to me says: We are working on ‘survival’. Funds are low. Keep us in your prayers.

24th September 2024 |

21 Sep – Acting with compassion – Seeking Justice

How can Christians in West Yorkshire respond to recent riots and racism? How can we build a better society? This was the theme of the recent Caritas Catholic Care Day of Reflection. Caritas Catholic Care focus on social action – what services can and should the Diocese provide to help those in need? This ranges from supporting older people to the Gianna Baby Bank to helping Syrian refugees get settled in Yorkshire to providing counselling in schools.

However, at the same time as responding to immediate need, we also need to respond to the root causes of problems such as racism, homelessness and local poverty. This is where SPARK comes in – SPARK is the J&P project working with younger people and is all about helping people tackle these root causes of social injustices. SPARK were invited to have a stall and also to do a short presentation to explain what SPARK Social Justice is all about.

One of the SPARK community is Lucy, a student teacher from St Winefride’s parish in Wibsey, Bradford. She came along and stole the show with an amazing and inspirational presentation in which she described her work helping young people to engage creatively with Catholic Social Teaching. Lucy has already organised events in her parish exploring themes to do with refugees and asylum seekers and the Season of Creation. All SPARK has done is to support the passion that Lucy already has for social justice. We are also sponsoring Lucy to undertake some training with Citizens UK. This will give Lucy a whole new set of skills to explore issues in more depth with other people and to engage them more easily.

Pictured here with Lucy is Tom Allan. Tom became involved with SPARK during our pilot project, when he was still a student at St Mary’s school Menston, and featured in a number of the videos that we did during the COVID lockdowns. Now in his final year at University, Tom has continued to be involved and is a member of the Project Steering Group – ensuring that the voices of young people guide how the project develops and the sorts of thing that we do.

21st September 2024 |