Community sponsorship is very rewarding © UNHCR/Photographer

Syrian refugee families find a warm welcome in West Wales

Community sponsors help Syrian refugees ‘come home to Wales’

Community sponsorship enables local groups to band together and supports a refugee family moving into their area, helping them navigate unfamiliar daily tasks and offering friendship as they put down new roots. It enables individuals to make a tangible difference to the lives of those forced to flee.

The government has committed to making refugees arriving via the community program additional to those coming through established resettlement programs, even though these are currently suspended due to the pandemic. Sponsor groups have emerged from the rural west of England to the heart of cities like Liverpool and London.

In late 2017 Muhaned Alchik, his wife Naheda, and their children also came to the area, by way of Lebanon, under the same Community Sponsorship scheme.

“I like everything in Wales. Cardigan’s great, the people are friendly, the shopping’s good, the weather is fine. It’s a lovely home,” Muhaned told UNHCR.

Muhaned has been attending college, studying building maintenance and construction. He hopes to find work as a carpenter and has been adding to his skills by volunteering with local businesses during the holidays, working at a local Bengali restaurant when shifts are available, and tending an allotment. Naheda, who used to teach in Damascus, is studying English and considering teaching again in the future.

The family was forced to flee Syria after family members were imprisoned. Muhaned worked in a travel agency in Syria and for a supermarket in Lebanon before being resettled to Wales.

Muhaned and Naheda have three children Shadi, 8, Sara, 9, and Hadi, 1. The two elder children are happy in school and have learned to speak both English and Welsh, as well as maintain their Arabic.

Muhaned and Shadi have been playing for the local side, Maesglas Football Club. Shadi, a goalkeeper, claimed he had made “60 saves” the previous week. They follow the fortunes of Liverpool and Manchester United as well as Real Madrid.

Away from work and school, life is still punctuated by trips to the mosque on Fridays and meetings with friends in the area.

The driving force behind welcoming the Alchiks to West Wales was Vicky Moller, a veteran activist. She spent almost three years gathering and mobilizing residents, forming a committee and charity, and navigating the application process including arranging visits by the Home Office.

Part of Vicky’s approach was to walk door to door in town and discuss the arrival with locals before they came. The learnings from the first family were applied to the second family which arrived in 2019.

“The generosity of people is both moving and breathtaking,” she said. “Community sponsorship is a lovely thing to do, it’s very rewarding, it’s a little kernel of perfection but it’s too small in Britain. This is too good to waste. It should spread.”

Sponsorship groups start as a kind of support network, but the aim is that the refugee family build autonomy as the months continue.

The community was comfortable with the two families they welcomed so far that they were close to agreeing to support a third family before the recent lockdown. That project can hopefully resume soon.

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