Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Gardens of Refuge

  • A party marking the end of our Gardens of Refuge project year with asylum-seekers and refugees. Plus ‘Signs of Welcome’: to be continued in 2018.

    It’s the end of the project year for our partnership with the CARAS team and the refugees and asylum-seekers they serve.

    Of course we are going to do more all together in 2018, and we’re planning that now.

    Yesterday was the end-of-year CARAS Saturday Youth Club party, enjoyed by over 50 young people and volunteers. 

    It was a high-energy afternoon with continuous home-made food to keep us going.

     Alongside the ping pong and games:

    • we did more carpentry on the big pallet-table we’re making for the Tooting Community garden
    • we made lots of Christmas baubles as gifts
    • we made over 20 macramé knotted hanging planters, using offcuts of T shirts as the strings. We were thrilled to have Tooting spider plants and tradescantia from Share Community garden.
    • we finished the party with a gift game of choice and chance from the roll of the dice to select, give, and swap presents

    The youth club is always a wonderful few hours when lots is offered and appreciated – all at the same time. 

    So we’re sharing photos mixed together, like the day itself. Its impact and welcome always feels much more than the sum of all the separate activities spread over 3 or 4 hours.

    Signs of Welcome workshop
    Late in November we had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop at the Museum Of London. CARAS is included in the fascinating exhibition called The City is Ours. It’s on until 2nd January and all ages would enjoy the mix of imagination, facts and ideas about living in complex diverse city like London. It’s well worth visiting!

    We ran a short hands-on workshop for children and adults in which we made Signs of Welcome, inviting anyone – including refugees and asylum-seekers – to rest, enjoy, join in with what they find in London.

    Without a lot of theory or introduction, over 50 people drew and decorated their welcomes in many languages.     We used strips of recycled foamboard from the Work and Play Scrapstore in Earslfield. Just like using the re-purposed strips of T shirt to make hanging planters it was good to explain that the attractive materials were saved from waste.
    It was an energising and also thoughtful hour. Many of the Signs were taken home and some were given to us for a future exhibition we’re thinking about. We’ll do this workshop again in 2018 locally.        It seems to touch participants and encourage them to say what they feel – and it’s a good design challenge that produces lovely images.
    Thanks so much to everyone who has participated in & contributed to the Gardens of Refuge Project this year!
    We’re proud that includes a broad and diverse group of young people, adults and families from the asylum-seeking and refugee community; CARAS staff and volunteers; local partners including Share Community, The Scrapstore, The Sound Lounge Trust, South London Makerspace, Fulham Timber, Martin Speed Ltd; TTT and Tooting Community Garden volunteers and session facilitators.
    More to come in 2018 and get in contact if you would like to join in.

  • November update on our ‘Gardens of Refuge’ refugee & asylum project partnership with CARAS

    This time last year we were in the middle of the voting period for the Aviva Community Fund, where the Gardens of Refuge joint project with the Tooting charity CARAS won £10,000 – thanks to the votes of many friends near and far. 

    This time last year…the voting was hot!

    We’re nearing the end of 2017’s diverse activities with refugee and asylum-seeker beneficiaries. TTT has co-facilitated over 20 workshops in 2017 with the project…there’s two more to go before Xmas.

    Here’s an update of activities since the summer – and a view forwards as we plan for 2018. We’ve included notes about each of these: 

    1. Family Group
    2. Youth Club for unaccompanied young people
    3. Adults Group
    4. Stay With Love exhibition
    5. 2018 plans
    6. Would you like to contribute?

    1 Family Group
    With the CARAS team we co-facilitated a Family Activity Day over October half term in the Hall at All Saints, Tooting. 50 people joined in to meet and reconnect, do some fun creative activities for all ages and enjoy lunch cooked by members of the group.

     

    The big activity was carving pumpkins – and before that of course you have to get hands-on to scoop out the seeds. Any reluctance to get sticky hands was very quickly lost…in fact this stage became an activity of its own as hollowing-out took over and the children shared their new skills (none had ever done this before). Then: sketching and designing, cutting and admiring, collecting candles to take home: adults and children made short work of 20 pumpkins.

    We created more Signs of Welcome:
     

    These narrow strips of timber – some of them are the slats from discarded bed frames – are a design challenge where the artist develops what they want to say as a message, works out the fit, and paints directly or uses stencils. 

    The arttist can also tidy up an earlier sign…so it’s a collective project too.
    Thanks Jeni, Nikki, Chuck, Hannah, Isabel and more.
    We’re going to continue creating ‘Signs’ in other workshops with adults and children. The Signs evolved as a combination of our Community Garden crop markers and the welcoming words in many languages that decorate the four pallet-benches made by the Youth Club in July.



    2 Youth Club
    A rainy October afternoon saw us preparing outdoors at the Community Garden with members of the Youth Club who wanted to come along to an extra session. Some of us prepped the barbecue, some got the volcano kettle going, and some sawed down the selected plum trees we’d agreed early in the year needed thinning out. 
    The style was ‘everyone contributes to making the day work’. 

     

    Flying pumpkins

    After doing those jobs we shared out lots of pumpkins and got down to carving, which was hilarious, with great results – and the first time for almost all of us. 
    We lit candles and admired the collection while we ate our grilled sweet corn and baked sweet potatoes.

    We only left the garden well after dark at 6:30 pm: it was a day of surpises all round where the rain was simply ignored. 
    Thanks loads to Fiona, Jeni, Chuck, Hannah and Egle.

    3 Adults group
    Adults take part in ESOL classes at CARAS, and we’ve begun to explore how best to work together.
    As an experiment we ran an hour’s screenprinting session after the Monday ESOL class – thanks to Fiona and Chuck.

    We’re developing the idea of a series of short sessions like that – perhaps aimed at helping individuals make their own living spaces feel more like homes, or at making gifts…and more.
     

    4 ‘Stay With Love’ Exhibition finale
    We covered the exhibition & opening night in blog posts here and here.

    We offered an extra meeting and discussion time on the last weekend of the show at The Sound Lounge, inviting anyone to join us to look at the 2018 strategy for the partnership between CARAS and TTT. It was very fruitful to talk, and we helped the chat along with some board game-style pieces representing purpose, partners, activities. 

    We took everything down with the help of the Adult ESOL class – and for a little while the large Family Group mural painting was balanced outdoors in the sun on the main road. Many people stopped to ask about it. Maybe there’s another project there…?

    5 Planning for 2018’s partnership with CARAS
    Since September we’ve been exploring potential activities, facilitation roles, beneficiary groups, local relationships and of course the overall purpose of TTT and CARAS working together in 2018. 
    The overall purpose is to strengthen local social sustainability including the existing Tooting community and the refugee and asylum-seeker community.
    In outline the intention in 2018 is to focus on: 

    • beneficiary wellbeing 
    • making deeper links with other partners in Tooting by participating together on varied activities
    • self expression – including sharing the stories of CARAS refugees and asylum-seekers

    There are planned 2018 events to contribute to, alongside whatever schedule of workshops that we devise – for example there’s Refugee Week, Wandsworth Arts Fringe, BATCA Community Day…and of course the 2018 Tooting Foodival.
    There’s also the balance of need to assess across CARAS beneficiaries – for example we have done a lot with the Youth Club, and there are also many other partners who engage with them. However the CARAS Adult group has less provision…so we may shift the focus towards them. 
    We’re exploring funding – what do we need it for; what are likely sources?
    We’ll share more on the 2018 strategy soon.

    “What is your dream?”

    6 Would you like to contribute?
    Do get in contact by email or on Facebook if you would like to contribute to this partnership project either as an individual or a local partner group. 
    Over 35 people from TTT have done so, and we find it valuable, creative, challenging and fascinating. We’ve learned a lot.
    CARAS offers us a two-part volunteer training induction on understanding the current reality for refugees and asylum-seekers in the UK and on safeguarding.

  • Opening night of Stay With Love exhibition – we celebrated with poetry, music and good company!

    On October 3rd the opening night of the Stay With Love exhibition at The Sound Lounge in Tooting saw a very diverse group of 75 join in to celebrate the exhibition. There were teenagers, families and young children from the asylum-seeking and refugee community who are served by CARAS. There were many of the CARAS team of staff and volunteers, and lots of TTT volunteers. All have been contributing to the creative and expressive work that makes up the exhibiton.
    Plus there were friends old and new from the wider community – it was a great welcoming mix from many countries!

    Carrie was our MC for the night. She welcomed everyone and reminded us that the offer to ‘Stay With Love’ had been written in July on one of the pallet-benches made in the Youth Club. That’s a poignant invitation for a young refugee to make.
      
    We saw the delightful CARAS Youth Club short film: two minutes capturing the experience of sharing and value that many of us have enjoyed as volunteers over the past two and a half years. We’ll add a weblink asap.

    Hannah White, co-founder of the Sound Lounge, celebrated the work and good humour of the young people from CARAS who are doing certificated training as coffee baristas and as sound engineers at the café.

    We shared poems and prose linked to the experiences of living in and valuing a new place, of changing perceptions and of new languages and relationships. Here is a poem read and written  by Resina Chowdhury:

    Prayer

    To move away from a land

    We must break ourselves off it completely. 

    The split leaves a wound

    a loss of memory, huge and gaping

    which nothing material can fill. 


    O Mother of a false birth, 

    you were not ready for me. 

    Where was the milk to offer your baby, all drained of blood? 

    Dying, I was taken to where

    the milk was plentiful

    where there was blood to give, rich and warm

    and we survived, 

    more or less, weaned by another. 

    But cannot forget those who held us before. 


    What is the treatment for the loss of a culture? 

    To see oneself continue in history? 

    What can be said when the spirit is forgotten? 

    When a life is not nurtured

    because it is not understood? 

    Still we seek out a tongue that will define. 


    Mother

    Teach me who I am. 

    Give me knowledge to recover myself. 

    Give me understanding to fill the loss. 

    Give me strength to withstand hostility. 

    Give me love to endure.  


    We had live music of many kinds –

    Dermot and Gerri led half an hour where the children 
    used all the percussion instruments we could find. 
    They were the backing band for extempore songs with words taken from some of the CARAS participants’ statements about their heroes or ambitions.
    David sang about Cristiano Ronaldo, Carrie sang
    ‘I Want to Be a Dentist’, Emiliano drummed…all fantastic!
    Shonar Spiral from London played two gutsy songs.

    Fadhil Alfadly and Kaspar King from Iraq rapped in Arabic over iPhone tracks and live drumming. One of the children stayed on to accompany their songs: she was very composed.

    Dermot played a solo set as conversation continued until it was time to tidy up and head home after a lovely evening together.

    Please visit The Sound Lounge and enjoy the exhibition any time the café is open. There are two interactive pieces alongside the wide range of creative work done by the Youth Club, the Family Groups and the ESOL classes.
    There’s a comments book set up, you can take a CARAS or TTT leaflet and please get in touch with CARAS or TTT if you want to know more, or if you want to find out how to volunteer. 
    Please take a #StayWithLove sticker or two and ask your friends to visit!

  • The Stay With Love exhibition is open and ready to visit. You can add your own views to the show.

    We’re thrilled that the Stay With Love exhibition has moved from concept to reality alongside our partners CARAS and The Sound Lounge. We experienced so much energy, creativity and patience from all the volunteers and staff involved in this experiment: Thank You!

    We hung the show on the 2nd October, and then the exhibition opening was brilliant last evening. Now the show is available to enjoy whenever The Sound Lounge is open, until October 29th.

    Drilling holes for hanging
    Suspending the figure drawings

    Two of the exhibition pieces ask for your views and ideas. 
    We hope you get there and add to When I Dream and Thread Your Story devised by CARAS and the adult group. Of course, you can enjoy the whole show with coffee or a sandwich served by young people from CARAS who are engaged in certificated work training at The Sound Lounge.

    ‘Thread Your Story’
    ‘When I Dream’

    The exhibition opening festivities yesterday included an afternoon family crafts workshop and then the main evening celebration – we’ll report on the celebration in the next blog post.

    Afternoon Family Crafts
    Straight from school, two dozen children & adults launched into an hour and a half’s making, all crowded around two long tables. It was a great scene and we admired their energy after a whole day in school. We offered two of our favourite and valuable projects. Both are related to the purpose and content of the creative work we have carried out alongside the refugees and aslyum-seekers from CARAS over the past two years in the Rooting in Tooting and Gardens of Refuge projects

    “Tooting’s insects need your love!”
    We looked at photos of some local garden insects (predators and prey; garden crop-friendly and also less desirable) and then made plastic bottle insect shelters for beneficial ladybirds and lacewings in the garden.
    With some clever planning, decorations onto the rolled-up corrugated cardboard could be protected from rain by being placed inside the bottle rather than stuck on the outside of the plastic (= design and technology for real).
    Families took their bottle-houses home to hang in the trees in their own gardens or neighbourhoods.

    She’s added a #StayWithLove sticker

    “Feel safe and breathe!”
    Secondly, we painted garden row markers with messages of welcome on them. That’s in the same spirit the CARAS Youth Club showed when they wrote inviting comments in many languages on the on four inscribed pallet-benches for the Tooting Twirl – one is in the show and two more are being used in the cafe.

    Children and adults devised messages – another design and planning challenge – which they painted on narrow wooden slats we’ve rescued from discarded bed frames – very neat recycling as the slats are strong and a perfect size. The artists donated all the painted markers to the Tooting Community Garden, which we really appreciate.

    All the new markers, laid out on one of the benches

    More soon on the evening opening celebrations….

  • ‘Stay With Love’: Gardens of Refuge Project update

    We’re reporting back every six weeks on the Gardens of Refuge Project. That’s our local project running throughout 2017 with refugees and asylum-seekers living in and nearby Tooting, alongside our project partners CARAS and The Grange.

    Our previous summary at the end of May can be read here.
    In June and July we’ve worked with the CARAS Saturday Youth Club. 

    Elly Brown, MD at CARAS says:

    “We’ve already witnessed the
    transformations that take place
    when people from far and wide
    can use their skills and knowledge
    to create something shared.”
    What have we been doing together?
    ‘Stay with Love’ Making instant pallet benches:

    In one mighty 4-hour session, a loose and changing group from the CARAS Youth Club co-designed, shared ideas, problem solved and brought in new team members to make four of these pallet benches.
    Hats off to that dedicated group whose pride meant they insisted on eating their communal lunch sitting on the new benches.
    Part of the production line was to write messages of welcome and invitation on the seat backs. 
    These are in many languages.
    These young people have come to the UK in search of a welcome, safety and to put down new roots. It’s poignant that they felt comfortable to contribute their own personal invitations so directly to all-comers.

    These benches went on to the pop-up village green of the Tooting Twirl and now they’re in the Community Garden. Come and have a seat!
    ‘Stay with love’ as one young man wrote
    on a bench.

     

    Beetles and Bees 
    Making planters for Hillbrook School:

    Construction was more straightforward than the benches. With carpentry finished quickly, in June we painted the new planters cream.

    In parallel we spent time drawing insects (real and imagined) – offering this in the crowded hall alongside ping pong, pool and games. It was a fun experiment to have youth clubbers drop by the ‘insect table’ to sketch….a new experience for everyone.

    Our plan was to scan these drawings to make laser-cut plaques and cut-out insects to fix  onto the planters as fascinating decoration.
    It worked! Many thanks for patience & persistence to Dermot, the South London Makerspace and Nicola.

    Passing around these 3-D cutouts at the start of the following sessions, everyone could see the young people’s feelings of ownership and achievement.

    The planters were delivered to Hillbrook School this week. In September we’ll have a celebration there with youth club members to ‘cut the ribbon’ to launch children’s growing in the beautiful planters.

    PLUS: We’ve continued to work alongside young people looking after the planting done over 3 years at the CARAS office and the Hall around the corner. Thanks Rose, it’s looking very good!

    Now we’re planning the next steps for the Family Days we’re facilitating in August in the Community Garden.

    We’ve also begun to explore what we can do together with a new CARAS beneficiary group – single adults who don’t join the family days or the youth club.

    If you would like to co-facilitate or contribute your time or materials to the Gardens of Refuge project – please email us, we’d love to discuss it.
    – Charles

  • Gardens of Refuge project: updating you on 4 fascinating strands at the end of May

    We’re sharing our monthly update about Gardens of Refuge.
    Gardens of Refuge is our 2017 partnership project with CARAS and The Grange to provide therapeutic and positive experiences for people of refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds who live in South-West London.
    There are four interrelated project strands to share:
    > Carpentry project with the Youth Club  
    > Family Activity Days
    > Vertical gardening with the Youth Club  
    > A 4-day trip to The Grange in Norfolk 

    1. Carpentry project with the Youth Club 
    We’ve developed a relationship with a nearby primary school who need planters for their own outdoor space.

    Led by Dermot, last weekend we began a series of 3 sessions to build and decorate these planters. The young people took on the design brief and modified the build based on other planters we have made together. In this case we’re making beds that are low enough for young children to use, and also tough enough to stand up to inevitable playground clambering.

    The session ran to twice its expected length because there was so much energy!
    Later on we have access to laser-cutting equipment or 3D printing to make plaques to fix to the beds.

    2. Family Activity Days
    This half term we have helped facilitate the fourth Family Day of 2017 – partly social, partly to do an interesting activity, partly to join together for a meal (allowing for Ramadan).


    Led by Jeni, we continued our mural project – the delightful idea of a ceiling decoration, based in images of water, for the underneath of the 4.5 metre-long rainwater catchment roof at the Tooting Community Garden.
    We started with impromptu storytelling in groups of 3 people of all ages, based on graphics done in April’s session.

    Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end, and each person supplied one of those – whatever their age.
    For example, using a painting of a snowflake, one story ran: ‘Once upon a time a beautiful snowflake was gently falling…..then the sun came out….and the snowflake turned to water and went plop on my head’. Hearing 9 or 10 of these imaginative stories was fantastic!

    Tuned up to be creative, we turned to painting details of our water images – either swirls and waves or drops (or petals…) – on the fascinating range of recycled scrap materials – metal, plastic, wood, CDs, buttons. (All from our friends at the Work and Play Scrapstore). Later we’ll arrange all these on the rainwater collector ceiling when we offer two Family sessions at the garden itself.

    3. Vertical gardening with the Youth Club
    In March and April Youth Club members made a pair of planters out of scrap pallets.  Since then we’ve been involving young people who want to work in depth with plants and keep all the planting looking good – all led by Rose, our team gardener.

    Each pallet has 3 very narrow beds, and we fixed them to the outside of the railings at the CARAS office at Blakenham Road. Both pallet-beds are planted with young plants grown in Tooting at Share Garden.
    Go and have a look – the beds symbolise the young people’s wish to look outwards, to interact with the wider community, to make something attractive for all to appreciate – and to enjoy the process.

    4. A 4-day trip to The Grange in Norfolk
    Earlier in May a group of 8 of us went to The Grange near Norwich – a respite centre combined with gardening and much more that CARAS has been to several times over the past 2 years. We were 4 young people from 3 countries, plus 4 adults from 3 countries, all helped by the two Grange hosts.

    We lived in the comfortable old house within ten acres of farmland, walked in the woods, looked at moths and grass snakes, cooked our meals, made bread and pots, made plant prints, played a lot of instruments and games, played with our mobiles.  On the middle day a larger group of 15 local people, including other refugees, joined for the weekly work day when a big list of jobs was tackled.

    The purpose is to have a positive, enjoyable, safe time together in a setting that is totally different from Tooting.
    It was a big privilege to join and help facilitate!

    Remember our Gardens of Refuge funding campaign and success?
    A proportion of the funds helps CARAS attend The Grange.
    More trips are planned for 2017.

    Thank you for reading about these diverse activities. We believe they add up to experiences which are valuable for all of us involved: we’re all beneficiaries.

    If you are interested to contribute either your time or other resources to help these projects – at a distance or hands-on – we’d love to talk about that. Please contact Charles by email.

  • Gardens of Refuge project. April ’17 update on vertical strawberries and a watery ceiling mural

    We’re continuing to facilitate workshops as part of the Gardens of Refuge project with refugees and asylum-seekers who use the local services of CARAS in Tooting.

    This is the project for which our partnership won funding from Aviva – via the public voting so many people joined last autumn.

    The emphasis of Gardens of Refuge is on creating therapeutic experiences where participants feel happy and safe to explore imaginative activities together.

    We’re working alongide the CARAS team and volunteers with two groups:

    • with the Saturday Youth Club (mostly unaccompanied teenagers) 
    • and with Family Activity Days (adults and children in half terms and school holidays)

    Here’s the story from Gardens of Refuge in March and April:


    Saturday Youth Club: our sessions take place alongside a whole range of other social and learning activities at the youth club. Success is when groups and individuals come and join in for some or all of the time, because they want to, and try out new things as well as building on what we all did together in ’15 & ’16 in ‘Rooting in Tooting’.
     

    In the 24th March and 1st April sessions the Club has built two pallet-planters and painted them ready for planting up.

    Below right, one of last year’s flourishing planters.

    We’ve also made a new vertical strawberry planter of textile (a theatre blackout curtain from the Scrapstore). Young people problem-solved how to make the planter, folding, tucking and stapling the heavy cloth onto a big piece of plywood (part of the old Community Garden fence…). 

    They planted it up with strawberries (these same plants were growing at CARAS in 2016 and overwintered in the Community Garden). The pallet planters and this strawberry wall are all at the entrance to the CARAS office, and the idea is for the benefits to be enjoyed by passers-by and visitors alike – a real Garden of Refuge in busy urban Tooting.

    April Family Activity Day: After our growing-based Day in February, we’re continuing to link family activities with our plans to offer sessions later in ’17 in the Community Garden.

    Our idea is to create a collaborative mural for the ‘ceiling’ of the rainwater harvesting roof in the Community Garden.
     It’s an exciting open-air space and the mural’s theme will be ‘Water’.

    That gives huge scope for decoration, pictures, ideas, celebration, story telling and sharing.  
    Water is life-giving for us all and for what we grow. Water is rich with diverse meanings worldwide.

    The rainwater harvesting roof built with Gatton School in ’13. Soon to have a ceiling mural!

    On Tuesday 11 April we made a start by immersing ourselves in ideas and images and different materials – there are so many threads to follow up.

    Thanks for these FAD photos, Nikki!

    The next session is in May, and we can’t wait…

    Another benefit is that the project is attracting new volunteers who have added their energy and diverse experience – so our whole group is learning together en route. Thanks to all the volunteer team & for your co-ordination, Dermot and Jeni! 

    We welcome contacts from others who would like to be involved, or who have ideas and resources to contribute.
    Please contact us by emailing TTT here.

    Yum! The crop in 2016’s textile planter

     – Charles

  • Gardens of Refuge project – February 2017 monthly update as we start with a Family Activity Day

    After the long haul of communicating near and far for voting in the Aviva Community Fund last year, winning funding in January, and getting on with the planning for 2017…we’ve begun the project!

    Our first session with the CARAS refugee and asylum-seekers has been a Family Activity Day on Valentine’s Day..
    It was a familiar mother-and-children event like many repeated all across Britain when it’s half term, and that everyday normalness was exactly the point: creating a safe and friendly space for some fun and practical family time together as a community.
    That’s the purpose of Gardens of Refuge: to create with asylum-seekers and refugees a therapeutic sense of wellbeing and feeling at home, plus growing activities and meeting members of the wider local community.

    Run by CARAS staff and volunteers, plus more from TTT, by 11:30 the church hall at All Saints Tooting was transformed with friendly faces and drop-in games and toys for all ages.

    Egle from CARAS ran a 90-minute programme while lunch was being prepared:

    • In a circle of chairs: welcome, introductions & ground rules for inclusion and safety.
    • In a big burst of energy – playing ‘fruit salad’ to get us all interacting, adults and children alike.
    • At 3 tables: looking at images from the Tooting Community Garden and saying which kind of activities individuals would like to try out this year- gardening, picnicking & cooking on a fire; garden crafts; and enjoying nature. Everyone had 5 votes to distribute using sticky stars…results to be shared.
    • Continuing at the tables to decorate flower pots using stickers, feathers and pipe cleaners.
    Carefully writing a plant label
    • Transplanting growing pots of supermarket herbs (donated by Waitrose Balham). Each pot was divided into 5 or 6 smaller pots, so the roots of basil, parsley, coriander, and greek basil have room to grow on windowsills back at home, and so they could all be shared out between 45 people.  
    • Meanwhile lunch was being cooked by Rama, one of the Chickpea Sisters, plus Georgie and Sara from Abel & Cole (who donated fresh salad).
    • To really get an appetite, we played another active circle game: ‘change places if you are wearing stripes…’
    • Then everyone sat down together to enjoy a hot meal.
    • Departure at 2:45 was a balancing act as there were a lot of plants to carry home – some families had three buses to catch – and another time we’ll bring some extra paper bags.

      Thanks to the CARAS volunteers: Rama, Vicky, Ruby, Susan, Nadia.
      And to the TTT volunteers: Resina and her children, Rose, Georgie, Sara, Chuck and Chris from the Royal Horticultural Society. Chris helped us through 2015 and 2016 with ‘Rooting in Tooting’ our first project with CARAS, and is continuing as a mentor in 2017.

      We’re making plans for Gardens of Refuge activities both with the CARAS Women’s Group and the Youth Club. Yesterday we met the Club’s Youth Council to see how they can be involved in guiding the project. The Council is great – 8 young people from 3 countries who are gaining experience of leadership, communication and self-confidence. More on that group later.

      PS – CARAS and TTT both share other updates on our respective facebook pages and on twitter – do follow if you want to be closer to the action! And, do get in contact by email if you want to offer volunteering time or resources – or ideas – to the whole project; we’d love to hear from you.

      In the kitchen
      Our motorscootering mentor

    • ‘Gardens of Refuge’ project wins 2017 funding from the Aviva Community Fund

      We are thrilled that Gardens of Refuge, the 2017 project working with Tooting refugees and asylum-seekers, has been awarded funding by Aviva. The project application was made by the local charity CARAS (Community Action for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers) and TTT are the partners along with The Grange respite centre in Norfolk.

      Thank you for all your votes and support! 

      Here’s our vision for the Gardens of Refuge project: please click here to read

      This funding award lets us look forward to a fascinating 2017, developing and delivering the new project and building on our learning and experience from our previous project together.  

      We want to do some things that we know work well, and also some new things.

      Plus we’ll invite ideas (and resources) from the many well-wishers who voted for Gardens of Refuge last November.

      A new feature that will add value is the new CARAS Youth Council. This governance group will help provide a voice for project beneficiaries in the youth club.
      We’ll also be working with other members of the CARAS community.

      We all expect to learn and benefit. One of our first reactions, apart from joy at the award and making the project real, is that this award gives profile and visibility to the fact that refugees’ lives matter, and that they have much to contribute in our shared communities.

      We’ll post more information on project plans as they develop.
      Yes, we all worked hard to get to this stage, so it’s great to have the affirmation from the Aviva Fund judges.
      It took us a while to be sure on announcement day: students of communication will be interested that Aviva made the ‘Project Winner’ info available online and by twitter…and it was 24 hours before CARAS received a direct email saying ‘You’ve won!’. By then we’d taken the public messages at face value and trusted that it was all true.

      And there are some extra surprises – such as a reception at Parliament in late January where all the funded projects can meet each other and their constituency MPs.

      We’ve worked since early 2015 with CARAS – that was on the ‘Rooting in Tooting’ project, supported by the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Greening Grey Britain’ campaign and by Sir Walter St John’s Educational Charity – more info here. That project brought new volunteers to CARAS & TTT; we’re really delighted with that.

      Thanks again for all your interest and support – 
      this is a very motivating start to the New Year!

    • Gardens of Refuge: yes we are through to the finals of the Aviva Community Fund!

      Brilliant success at the voting stage: Aviva Community Fund has just confirmed that we’re through to the finals for the Gardens of Refuge project! 
       
      We now do some further application steps by December 7th, and then there’s judging and then the results are announced January 10th ’17.
      Great news & thanks for all the support!
       

      To see the project description, click here: https://goo.gl/y6b66Y