Transition Town Tooting

Tag: CARAS

  • BATCA Community Heroes

    BATCA Hero Hilary

    It was a good night for TTT and our partners at last night’s BATCA (Balham & Tooting Community Association) Community Heroes Awards.  Our Rooting in Tooting colleagues at CARAS (Community Action for Refugees & Asylum Seekers), won a Team Award, while Hilary Jennings ex-co-chair and key player in TTT since 2008 was a highly commended hero(ine).

    Eleanor Brown, CARAS Youth Services Co-ordinator, with Hafsa and Waseem
    We were happy that our nomination for the ever helpful Ilesh Patel at Miss U Stationers also resulted in a highly commended award.  

    Hilary, delighted (and somewhat surprised!) with her award, reported that “it was a great evening with a real sense of warmth and pride in how this area is a place of community and diversity. A few people mentioned it being an example of how diverse community can live well together.”

    All the Community Award winners are listed in the BATCA press release – click here to read it.


    Email us if you’d like to find out more about our Rooting in Tooting project and check out the newly launched CARAS website!  And don’t forget tomorrow’s Reduce Reuse Resparkle at Tooting Library!


  • Exploring facilitation choices for our ‘Rooting in Tooting’ project with asylum-seekers and refugees

    Our new ‘Rooting in Tooting’ project has been developed with the Tooting charity CARAS (Community Action for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers). We’ve written two posts so far, please scroll down this blog to read them. You’ll see that our pilot project in May and June was enjoyable and positive. 

    For Those in Peril on the Sea – Hew Locke

    Quiz question A: what percentage of the migrants who have come to Europe so far in 2015 have reached Calais? 1%, 4%, 8%, 15%? Answer is at the end of the post.

    On Sept 1st, 11 of us gathered at CARAS for an orientation hosted by the charity team. 
    Against a background of dramatic media coverage, our intention was to understand just a bit more about the ‘whys, whats and hows’ for refugees and asylum-seekers, and the experiences of the young people and families with whom CARAS works.

    We know a lot about the activities we are going to do offer: growing and gardening and improving biodiversity at the CARAS office, creative projects, telling the Rooting in Tooting story over the next year, and exploring low-carbon living. 
    We’re not familiar with the reality of life for refugees now. 

    • How should we offer activities so that they are meaningful to participants, and so that we share them in an appropriate way? 
    Rug People – Paloma Varga Weisz

    A 2-hour discussion on this topic had to be very selective, and we take our TTT hats off to Eleanor and Molly as guides. 
    Thank you for your preparation and care, and thoughtful, challenging comments.

      Quiz question B: What was the country of origin for the largest number of unaccompanied children entering the UK so far in 2015?  
      Afghanistan; Eritrea; Albania; Syria? Answer is at the end of the post.

      Three of the topics that we discussed:

      1. Refugees and asylum-seekers have been repeatedly processed and questioned…of course those are the steps for coming to an agreement about official leave to stay in the UK. 

      • To balance that experience in our activities: we’ll ask for and trust that individuals have skills and that they can teach each other; we’ll tackle things together rather than directing.We’ll let participants volunteer what they want to tell us.
      The Folkestone Mermaid – Cornelia Parker

      2. Unaccompanied teenagers are resilient and ambitious, not passive. They have crossed many countries (at CARAS 18 home countries are represented), and weathered many setbacks (the ones that make it). Asked in youth club discussions about their ideal futures, they want to give something back – for example become a teacher, or a pharmacist. “In many ways they are the alpha children of the world”, and they deserve respect. 

      • We’re encouraged not to shy away from new vocabulary that can be stretching and thought-provoking. We’ll explain specialist and unfamiliar language.

      3. What is going well in the UK for refugees? The UK system sees teenage unaccompanied asylum seekers as ‘children first’ and provides a range of services to support them, so that as far as possible they can experience life like other teenagers locally – with everyday choices, opportunities, and challenges. 

      Public Works – Folkestonomy

      These approaches are role models for other countries.

      • We’ll try and reflect the atmosphere in the youth club, which “feels like a group of people having a nice time together”.   We’ll encourage putting down roots.

      All the photos are taken at Folkestone Sculpture Triennial shows 2008-2014, which included themes of dislocation and distant travel in the setting of a derelict Channel port railhead. 
      And the two quiz answers? Question A: 1%. Question B: Albania.

      Please contact TTT if you would like to discuss or contribute to this project. – Charles

    • Snapshots from the CARAS Open Day in Tooting

      TTT is looking forward to our new partnership project with CARAS and the RHS ‘Greening Grey Britain’ campaign (see our 18th Aug post below). To help launch ‘Rooting in Tooting’, we joined in at the CARAS Open Day at All Saints’ Church, Tooting. 
      It was a very welcoming day for the extended CARAS family, where many people knew each other and came to chat in the sun (or find some shade), or play outdoors. 
      We had a brilliant lunch made by The Chickpea Sisters (who’ll be at the Tooting Foodival on Sun 13th Sept). There was music, dancing…& some diverse growing action.

      Chris was flat out sowing seeds and playing with mud:
       

      Chris plus seed sowers
      Making mud seed bombs

       

      Threshing and winnowing wheat grown in the Tooting Community Garden: we took the heads of wheat and did the steps used round the world for thousands of years (and which are still in our language even if we’ve never seen it happen). 
      So, Seamus found helpers for threshing to separate the wheat grains from the heads, and then winnowing the resulting mix to remove the chaff:

      Bashing bags on the ground…
      …or jumping up and down on them
      Then, with the right puff, the chaff blows away
      Flicking up the chaff to catch the wind: experts!

      We also gathered great ideas in several languages for what to consider growing in the project: for food, for health, for beauty, and for nature:

      Thanks to all (of all ages) at the open day for getting so involved! 
      Plus, we’re grateful to Chris and Sophie from the RHS, and to Seamus, Jenny and Chuck from TTT, and all at CARAS. More news as ‘Rooting in Tooting’ develops.

    • Young people’s garden project leads to Rooting in Tooting

      If you’ve walked past the Derinton Community Centre in Tooting recently, you may have noticed vibrant yellow planters bursting with colourful flowers, where rubbish used to reside, and young people sitting on bright benches doing their homework.

      Those young people, who attend the CARAS youth club on the site, worked with a team from Transition Town Tooting to build the planters and the benches and paint them over a number of weeks. They sowed seeds early on in the project and also chose plants that now grow there, during a visit to Share Community Garden

      The project came about after the youth club made a visit to Tooting Community Garden.  This led to the idea of the teenagers creating an urban garden on-site over eight weekly Saturday sessions.

      “Before this, I didn’t know how to plant and grow plants, but I learned how, and I enjoyed making the planter too”, said Waseem, one of the young people who transformed the space.

      CARAS (previously Klevis Kola) is a community based organisation working with refugees and asylum seekers.  The gardening project was developed with the young people, encouraging teamwork and communication, developing and practicing new skills and meeting new people in the wider community.

      Jenny Teasdale, who coordinated Transition Town Tooting’s involvement said,

      “Working with these young people over the last couple of months has been wonderful. Together, we imagined the possibilities of an urban garden, creating a mood board of ideas, and then we made some of those ideas a reality.

      Everyone planted seeds in the first few weeks and the kids tended them throughout, watching sunflowers, beans and salad leaves growing, ready to be planted out in the final weeks. With wooden materials from the community garden, the kids cut, assembled and painted planters and benches – making design decisions on the fly and developing new skills along the way. As a group, we decided what plants to grow and where to site what we built.

      I know I wasn’t the only person sad to see the project come to an end, having enjoyed every second of the process. At the same time, we are all really happy to see the transformation in just two short months.”

      CARAS Youth Coordinator, Molly Abraham spoke about the project,

      “The gardening project with TTT has been a fantastic opportunity for young people who attend CARAS to gain skills, share knowledge and create something we are all extremely proud of.  It’s been amazing to watch the group grow in confidence as they became proficient with drills, saws and secateurs, and to relax into sharing stories of growing in their home countries.  Working with the wonderful team from TTT has been a real pleasure for all of us and we are excited to be able to develop the work, and the friendships, over the coming year.”

      “We painted the pallet planter and the yellow planter, and I sowed flowers and beans. They’re still growing”, said Hafso, shown here painting.

      Spurred on by the development of the space and the enthusiasm of the youth group, we are delighted to announce that CARAS and Transition Town Tooting are now working in partnership with the RHS over the next year, running monthly sessions with the youth club and adults at CARAS.

      The new project is called Rooting in Tooting, and is part of the RHS’s Greening Grey Britain scheme. We’ll be developing more flourishing, attractive growing ideas that will transform the site.  This practical, experiential project is just one of the ways CARAS is helping newly-arrived people to integrate into the vibrant community of Tooting.

      Chris Young from the RHS led a session with the youth group last Saturday:

      “I was very excited to make my first practical visit to the CARAS youth club, and had a great afternoon working with the youth club members and volunteers. We started by talking about our project to grow plants in various spaces surrounding the centre and then looked at propagating some herbs that could be used later on.
       
      I gave a quick demonstration of how to take cuttings from the plants I’d brought and then everyone got stuck in and had a go.We finished up by extracting seeds from dry seed heads and sorting them into origami seed packets we’d made earlier.

      Everybody was incredibly helpful, enthusiastic and welcoming. I was also impressed that some of the young people knew the plants I brought and told me about how and where they grow in their home countries.Fingers crossed that the cuttings root!
       
      Looking forward to my next visit for the community fun day on Saturday where we’ll set up stand for the project .”

      We’ll be promoting the new project at the CARAS Family Fun Day on Saturday, 22nd August.