Refugee Awareness Week Resources (June 15th-21st 2020)

Refugee Awareness Week

Refugee Awareness Day serves to acknowledge and raise awareness of the courage, fortitude and perseverance of millions of refugees around the world. Many refugees have suffered traumatic experiences requiring them to seek safety in unknown and unfamiliar places. They face an unknown culture and may be unable to speak the language of their new home making it difficult to settle in, make friends, access education, and find employment. Many will face stigma and bias and be told to return to where they came from.

 

I share many resources and links here to enable you to teach your children what a refugee is, to help them distinguish between refugees and migrants, and to highlight for them some of the experiences refugees may have and many of the challenges they face.

I have included lots of questions you may wish to explore and have provided lots of links to videos, stories and lesson plans. I hope this is of assistance to you. If there are other resources you are aware of that would be helpful to others, please leave a comment and a link. 

With that said, let’s look at the resources. 

What is a Refugee?

 

Discuss: 

• What new terminology did you encounter in this clip? Teach the vocabulary needed to discuss this topic. This list of key terms may be helpful.

• What is the difference between a migrant and a refugee? (Please note this video mentions children being at risk of sexual exploitation.)

 

 

Discuss:

• What circumstances might force you (or your family) to abandon your home and leave your country? Find out why people become refugees.

• Where do you think you would go if you were forced to flee your home?

• How many refugees do you think there are in the world? Linked is the UNHCR data. These maps may help your child visualise the data on global refugee numbers. This data from 2018 is presented clearly and may be helpful for your child to examine.

• Where are most refugees coming from? This data is from World Vision. (Please note this is a Christian charity site). 

• What would you pack if leaving your home for good?

• Which countries host the greatest number of refugees? This data is from Amnesty International. (Please note this is a charity site). 

• What is the journey from their home like for refugees?

 

 

• Where do refugees go when they arrive in a foreign land? Many are placed in refugee camps. Learn more about refugee camps and read this account 16 in a refugee camp: Here’s what her days are like. Linked in that article are many other resources sharing the voices of refugees. Another useful article is this ‘What’s Life like in a Syrian Refugee Camp?’ (Please note this is a Muslim charity site). Here are 7 refugee stories,. together with resources for mapping their journeys. Get the complete lesson plan to accompany the last 2 linked resources here.

• Arriving as a refugee in a new country, how do you think the residents of your new country would react to you and your family?

• Imagine a family of strangers in need, who could not speak English, showed up at your house tomorrow with only the clothes on their backs. Would you help them or turn them away? Why? If you did decide to help them, what do you think you could do to help the family? This activity is from this Pulitzer Center lesson plan which you may wish to use in its entirety.

 

 

• What difficulties do you think you might face in trying to settle in? Linked is a list of settlement challenges.

• What comes to mind when you hear the words “migrant” and “refugee”?

• What are some positive and negative representations of migrants and refugees that you have seen in the media?

• What personal experience do you have with these issues?

• Are there refugee and/or immigrant families or communities in your town?

• Do you know of any programs or organisations in your area that support refugees and immigrants?

• The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was created in 1950, during the aftermath of the Second World War, to help millions of Europeans who had fled or lost their homes. It continues to support refugees to this day. Search their website to learn more about their work and for stories of refugees in your country.

• There are many myths about refugees and people seeking asylum. Encouraging pupils to question what they hear and fact check those myths is important.

 

 

Additional Resources

• Throughout Refugee Week, an online interactive exhibition exploring stories from search and rescue operations will be hosted. Find it here at Refugee Rescue. 

• Here is a timetable of Refugee Week activities.

• Roads to Refuge has several lesson plans available on their website. This is an Australian site.

• These ‘Go Back to Where you Came From’ resources are worth checking out. 

• The Pulitzer Center has lots of resources for older pupils. Search for refugee on their website.

• Anglia Ruskin University and Norfolk Schools of Sanctuary were in touch with me to share some of the resources they have created for this year’s Refugee Day. (Linked are their Twitter pages.) The resources are inspired by the stories of Basque Child refugees who sought sanctuary from the Spanish Civil War in the East of England in 1937. One of the learning resources is a virtual ‘school trip’ to a new online exhibition, available at https://havenseast.org. The exhibition has additional activities for younger visitors. Norfolk Schools of Sanctuary also has a resource page. I particularly like the Words of Welcome page. Why not have your child learn to say hello and welcome in as many other languages as they possibly can? Find hello in 100 languages on Bilingua. 

 

 

• You may wish to use this video if you have younger children:

 

• or this one to learn hello and goodbye from 70 places around the world. Warning – This one is very quick!

 

• You may find some of these older posts helpful as you explore the topic of refugees with your children:

  • Migration teaching materials taken from 5+5 Activity Guide (no.9);

  • Actively Raising Anti-Racist Children;

  • Hope Over Hate: Addressing Prejudice with our Children;

  • Empathy Day.

• Book Trust has put together these lists of books to explore what it means to leave home and start your life over.

  • Younger children;

  • Older Children;

  • Teens.

• Books for Topics has shared this list of books about refugees and immigration.

• Sita Brahmachari will be sharing some of the refugee characters in her stories every day this week. Details on her blog. 

 

Looking After Refugees and their Children in our Schools/Community

It is very important we are mindful of the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). These can lead to toxic stress. The Harvard University Center on the Developing Child explains ACEs and how they relate to toxic stress and has created this infographic as a useful summary.  They suggest three principles – reducing stress, building responsive relationships, and strengthening life skills – are the best way to prevent the long-term effects of ACEs. Discover more about those three principles in this PDF.

Knowing this, how can we support refugees in our community?

 

 

 Take care and stay safe!