If you’re a school or educational institution that is interested in interactive educational talks on refugees, then we can deliver workshops to suit all age groups.
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We recently delivered a successful workshop at a high school in Cheshire, entitled “Understanding Refugees”. The positive feedback from pupils and teachers has now encouraged us to offer our classroom based workshop to schools across Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Lancashire.
We can also offer this workshop to schools across the UK with enough notice, but our focus is primarily in the North West as this is where most of our client group is based.
Why Deliver A Workshop About Refugees?
While Britain as a nation has a history of welcoming those fleeing persecution, it cannot be denied that the general mood in Britain since the refugee crisis began has been one of anxiousness. It could well be that the European Referendum of 2016 amplified concerns of the fear of the outsider.
Delivering these kinds of presentations and workshops is a perfect counter to general disinformation that can often go unchecked.
Delivering Workshops to Schools
We had the following feedback on the presentation:
Participants
The event saw the encouraging involvement of students and, in particular, positioned the students in the middle of hypothetical situations through role playing. This enabled the children to gain a different perspective on the life of a refugee.
Thinking more widely, the workshop gave confidence to the children to speak and engage with young people of different backgrounds.
The workshop also encouraged children to get involved in teamwork and articulate their answers i.e. by encouraging critical thinking.
The School
The feedback was that the workshop was purposeful towards school’s needs.
The school is now able to use the work created by the children for display purposes or to reference to. Thinking ahead, the school will be able to develop further work that relates to this topic.
The workshop also gave an excellent opportunity for the school to illustrate concepts and situations to their students in a co-working environment that they may not have been exposed to in the past.
Outcome of educational talks on Refugees
While the general feedback of the workshop was very good, there are some things that we could improve on. For example, this particular school had a diverse range of students with a significant number not having English as their first language.
Trying to explain what some of the language being used by the media (and some members of the public) was difficult at times. To describe what some of the negative labels meant in their truest sense would have been better with the aid of an interpreter.
Overall, the children understood the meaning of refugees. Compassion was built through reflecting on situations and their feelings. Finally, a sense of curiosity and empathy of the lives of refugees was felt across the workshop.
The session was delivered by Attia Shiraz and we’re grateful for her well-received presentation. Any enquiries to speak to Attia are welcome. Please get in touch via the contact page.