Sunday, August 02, 2009
Liverpool STAR Win Awards
Members of Liverpool STAR were honoured this year with awards from the Liverpool Guild of Students.
Liverpool STAR won the Volunteering Project of the Year award for creating the Liverpool Women’s Group for Asylum Seekers and Refugees, while Liverpool STAR member Laurie Wilson won a Volunteering England Gold Award.
Here Laurie talks about his background in volunteering and some of his favourite memories.
Volunteering my time and getting much more in return
Written by Laurie Wilson (Liverpool STAR)
I originally got involved in volunteering with asylum seekers about two and a half years ago during my first year at university. My reason for doing so was because I wanted to use the abundance of spare time that student life had provided me with to do something positive and rewarding. At first I took part in a project taking groups of asylum seekers on trips to museums and Liverpool’s other tourist attractions. The ‘official’ goal of this project was to help to integrate the asylum seekers into the local culture and also to make them aware of all of the things that you can do for free in Liverpool, however, unofficially, the idea was just to make sure that everybody had fun, made new friends and just generally enjoyed themselves!
I became involved with STAR late, at the start of my third year of uni, due to the lucky coincidence that the project I was involved in had a drastic shortage of volunteers and I’d got word that Liverpool STAR group was full of enthusiastic people, passionate about helping to improve the lives of asylum seekers! After a meeting with one of the managers of Asylum Link (a local centre for asylum seekers) we decided set up a ‘Conversation Club’, a kind of informal English class, on Friday afternoons.
The project took off better than we had possibly imagined and has been a huge success due to enthusiasm of both the asylum seekers and the volunteers, and in particular due to the lesson planning skills of Laura and Claudia, two of the group of superb volunteers involved with the project. Some weeks the room was packed to bursting point with people, everybody having a great time and improving their English language ability (and I don’t just mean the asylum seekers, I’ve found that being challenged to explain the meaning of words I take for granted has led me to think more about the language!). The best thing for me about the conversation club has been that it never feels like I’m “going to do volunteer work” it just feels like I’m going to hang out with my mates and have a laugh!
I think that both of the projects that I have been involved in (and the ones that I haven’t such as the very popular and successful women’s group also being run by Liverpool STAR) benefit the asylum seekers who participate in them in a variety of ways. Alongside the more practical benefits, such as improving language ability or gaining a better knowledge of the city, the projects have also offered people the opportunity to make friends with English people (and discover that a lot of us do care!), have some fun, and enjoy a distraction from what are incredibly hard and often depressing circumstances.
If I had to pick a highlight from the time I have been involved with volunteering and with STAR it would have to be at the conversation club Easter party, seeing a room full of people dancing, smiling and singing along to Bob Marley. The time that I’ve put into volunteering was worth it for that moment alone!
Thanks for your story Laurie, and congratulations to you and Liverpool STAR on your awards!
Posted by STAR team on 02/08/2009 at 11:52 AM
in Group News
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