Ceri -  The Sanctuary Project Bethal Community Church

Quotes from the responses to the questions that I gave to the volunteers featured in Creating Sanctuary.

1. “I help in The Sanctuary Project Bethel Community Church, an organisation which helps refugees, who have fled their war torn countries. My particular contribution is helping the young men to learn to speak English.”

2. “There were two major factors which brought about my volunteering career; my husband had died recently and just before he died I had more or less given up my tutoring work. I felt lost. Always having been an active person, my life suddenly seemed to have no purpose.”

“I am a very active person and love to be out and about. I live on my own most of the time, and though that’s ok, I need purpose in my life. Volunteering has certainly provided that purpose.”
“My partner and I have been adopted by two young refugees from Syria, as their surrogate British parents.”

4. “The other difficulty is not knowing whether I’ll be teaching someone who has some English, little English or no English. It depends who turns up. The longer I teach the easier it is getting, as I now have a build-up of what works.”

5. “They have suffered much hardship and danger to get here, and would like to settle and get work and contribute to their new society. They are prepared to work long hours in not always good conditions.”

6. “If in our settled and well established communities if we are able to accept the refugees and integrate them into our lives, I believe we would benefit enormously. We in the UK are becoming an ageing population and the problems of caring for this growing less able group, is becoming almost impossible to comprehend.”

7. “Volunteering has made a huge difference to my life. I understand this different group of people to be my own, and am able to speak to them all with an ease I didn’t have initially. They very rarely complain, they just need help to understand their new community rules and regulations and most of all speak English so they can be understood and get work.”