18th October 2016 was St John’s whole school ‘Refugee Day’; a programme of events organised to raise awareness of the plight of refugees and to generate commitment to practical action. The ‘Refugee Day’ saw a full day planned with workshops and visiting speakers including authors, poets, charity representatives and musicians, some of whom were refugees themselves.
Miss Althea Pipe, Director of Studies explained, “As part of our curriculum over the last year, we have been learning and responding in different ways to the refugee crisis. However, we wanted to give children a deeper understanding of the situations that refugees face, together with the will to take action not only now but in the future. We wanted them to hear from a range of speakers who have themselves taken action to help refugees as well as to celebrate some of the diverse gifts and interests that people from other cultures bring.”
The children began the day with the whole school going on a ‘refugee walk’. They brought with them a rucksack that contained things they would take if they were given a couple of hours’ notice that they had to leave their home, never to return. In school, they had talks and workshops from Nola Ellen and Richard Asquith on an introduction to refugees using Paddington Bear, charity speakers including Oxfam, Save the Children and a Red Box talk. Anthony Robinson and Annemarie Young provided workshops based around their refugee-inspired books, poet Harry Baker based his sessions on writing poems inspired by the refugee crisis and Vanessa Altin spoke about her personal experiences with refugees, examples of which can be found in her book 'The Pomegranate Tree', a moving novel about the Syrian war for young adults. Top footballers from The Red Card spoke about their campaign to educate children about racism and the children also looked at the paper boat refugee art by Bern O’Donoghue. Music for change (Emmanuel, Lucky and ‘Black voices’) also provided workshops to celebrate the diversity and richness of different cultures.
The children were very moved by the talks they heard and took part in. “It is really shocking to hear the stories of refugees” … “and how fragile life is”, and, “It has been really interesting to learn how individual each refugee’s story is.” Another child said, “Although today has not been a replica of life as a refugee, it has given us a good representation of some of what it is like and raised our awareness.” And another said, “It was so surprising to hear that the 6 richest countries between them only take 9% of refugees.” The school charity this term is Cambridge Calais Refugee Action Group (CamCRAG) and donations were split between this charity, Save the Children and Oxfam.
