Help Refugees: Our Shared Future

Help Refugees launch Refugee Week at the V&A with a Lecture Theatre take-over. Join us to learn about the experience of refugees and asylum seekers, both recent and those who settled in the UK many years ago. Through dynamic, discussion panels and the opportunity for audience participation, we hope to provide an insight into the reality of people's differing experiences, their challenges, how the situation has changed over time and how we can make things better in the future. This is a rare opportunity to learn from a variety of very knowledgeable individuals and organisations.

12:00 – 14:00: The realities of arriving in the UK, the challenges faced by refugees and asylum seekers when they get here, access to information, services and support.

Hassan Akkad, featured in the BAFTA winning documentary Exodus, from Syria
George Szirtes, poet who was a refugee during the Hungarian revolution
Liz Clegg, Founder of the Calais Women and Children's Centre and the Meena Centre
Natasha Walter, Founder of Women for Refugee Women

15:00 – 17:00: Longer-term challenges for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, integration into a new life, access to education/higher education, employment and social integration.

Salah El Nagar, Poet, writer, teacher from Egypt
Taban Shoresh, Founder of Lotus flower NGO, from Kurdistan
Emma Williams, Chief Executive of Student Action for Refugees
Anna Jones, Co-Founder of Refuaid

http://www.helprefugees.org.uk/