Refugee Week 2024

All too often right now, we as a society are being encouraged to see migrants as an amorphous mass of people, rather than the individuals who we get to know in our drop-in.

These are young people with a range of religions, life experiences, personalities, aspirations and quirks. One young person is scared of cats; another finds us funny and is often laughing with us. One young man brought in a bag of doughnuts to say thank you to us for our help (despite being on minimal Home Office support); another reluctantly accepted our offer of a pair of boots, when sleeping out in sub-zero conditions in leaky trainers. One loves watermelon; another will always make a coffee when he arrives, before he does anything else.

We hear stories of harrowing hardship and suffering: close family members that can no longer be contacted; physical injuries incurred on their perilous journeys away from their homeland; loneliness, confusion and sometimes despair. But equally often, we hear stories of hope and resilience, and we hear these young people tell us how lucky they feel to have made it to this country; how much they want to learn good English, find work, and feel like they are part of society.

We have now supported many refugees on a journey from homelessness into settled accommodation, and have seen them improve week by week as they start to feel truly at home in Norfolk. We are encountering a wide range of individual young people and, as always at MAP, we are treating them as such – each one with a different story to tell.

MAP is proud to say that all migrants are always welcome in our centres.