Manchester Refugee Support Network (MRSN)Trustees' Annual Report

April 2015 - 31 March 2016

1. Reference and Administrative Information:

Charity Name: Manchester Refugee Support NetworkOther name which the charity uses: MRSNCharity registration number: 1109990Address of principal office: 129 Princess Road, Moss Side, Manchester, M14 4RBTelephone: 0161 868 0777Website: www.mrsn.org.uk

Names of Charity's trustees as at 31st March 2016:Angel N K Kaleta ChairIbrahim Sirage Ahmedin Vice-ChairMike Mpofu SecretaryKidane Gebretatos TreasurerAddisu Tewolde MemberChefena Heilemariam Member

The current Board of Trustees was elected at the Annual General Meeting on 20th November 2015 and has served one year of their 2 years’ term. Election is due at next year’s AGM.

Independent Account Examiners:Community Accountancy Service Limited, The Grange, Pilgrim Drive,Beswick, Manchester M11 3TQ

Bankers:NatWest Bank, Chorlton-cum-Hardy Branch, 438 Barlow Moor Road,Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester M21 0BR

2. Charitable Objects

To advance education and relieve financial hardship amongst those seeking asylum and those granted refugee status particularly by the provision of legal and other advice.

To preserve and protect the physical and mental health of those granted refugee status and their dependants.

To advance the education and training of those granted refugee status and their dependants in need thereof so as to advance them in life and assist them to adapt within a new community.

To advance the education of the public in general about the issues relating to refugees and those seeking asylum.

The provision of facilities for recreation or other leisure time occupation with the

object of improving the conditions of life of those persons who have need of such facilities by reason of their youth, age, infirmity or disablement, financial hardship or social and economic circumstances.

3. Structure, Governance and Management

Governing DocumentThe organisation is constituted, registered as a charity on 15 th June 2005, and is governed under its amended Constitution adopted on 27th May 2011.

MembershipFull Membership of MRSN is open to all properly constituted Refugee Community Organisations (RCO) in Greater Manchester that agree to support the aims of MRSN. Associate Membership of MRSN is open to any adult who is interested in furthering the work of MRSN. Only Full Members have the right to vote at Annual or Special General Meetings.

Each Refugee Community Organisation constitutes a single member of MRSN and nominates a representative to vote on its behalf at any Annual General Meeting or any other Special General Meetings of the membership, including the election of the Management Committee.

Recruitment and Appointment of Management CommitteeThe Board of Trustees, for the purposes of charity law are known as members of the Management Committee. Under the requirements of the Constitution the members of the Management Committee are elected to serve for a period of two years and are elected at the Annual General Meeting. The trustees are elected from the membership of refugee communities that MRSN serves. The Management Committee seeks to ensure that the needs of the refugee communities are appropriately reflected through the diversity of the trustee body.

New member organisations are sought throughout the network to increase engagement and the diverse candidacy of the Management Committee. To enable an increased pool of experience and skills on the Management Committee, non-voting advisers, and up to 2 co-opted members, can be invited on to the Management Committee and provide additional skills and experience to assist in steering the organisation. During this period, the Management Committee did seek for additional advisers or co-opted members. However, only one co-opted member accepted to commit to the Board.

Trustee Induction and TrainingFollowing their election, new trustees were provided with Governance training covering:

The obligations of Management Committee members and signposting to relevant Charity Commission publications.

Current agenda items for Management Committee meetings. The main documents and policies which set out the operational framework for

the charity, including the Constitution.

The finance and funding of the organisation including the Finance Policy, Strategy and Plan as well as the latest independently audited accounts.

Business Plan and future objectives.

Risk ManagementKey risks are identified in our Business Plan. The main risk to MRSN is securing funding for services and, thereby, for the infrastructure of the organisation, and for maintaining a healthy level of reserves. Due to the economic situation, funding levels have been difficult to sustain, but this has been a period of stability with minimum core provision maintained for MRSN following the closure of a range of services over the previous year.

We have re-developed our financial strategy and have successfully reduced our outgoings in comparison to 2 previous financial years, by maintaining all our operations in one office at 129 Princess Road.

In order to diminish financial risk, we use a system of variance recognition in our accounts. This system enables us to detect any favourable or adverse variances of budget from actual figures and then by analysis of their impetus and implications, the financial system can prevent future short-falls.

Organisational StructureMRSN can have a Management Committee of up to 9 members, plus up to a further 2 co-opted members. The Management Committee usually meet ordinarily every 5 weeks (and when necessary) and is responsible for the strategic direction and the policy of the charity. In 2015-16 the Management Committee consisted of 5 elected representatives and one co-opted member. During the year and in compliance with its delegated duties, the management committee held 21 meetings.

A scheme of delegation is in place for sub-committees and others. The voluntary Manager, Barbara Guest who was part of the team from November 2015 to March 2016 had responsibility for the day to day operational management of the organisation, individual supervision of the staff and also ensuring that the staff continue to develop their skills and working practices to ensure high quality service provision. She has subsequently progressed into a full time job with a different organisation. Some of the above task where informally delegated to the Community Development worker, being the only full time employee during this period. Other duties were carried out by appointed trustees from time to time.

4. Objectives and Activities

MRSN’s core purpose is to: build strong and independent refugee community organisations, run by skilled

leaders, which help bring about lasting change in the lives of refugees and people seeking asylum

provide a range of high quality services to refugees, helping them to success-fully integrate and participate in society

Drawn from its charitable objects, MRSN has the following key organisational goals:

To support and empower Manchester's refugee communities to establish strong organisations.

To increase public awareness around issues of asylum. To give refugees and asylum seekers a voice and chance to express

themselves and represent the needs and aspirations of their communities. To reduce levels of stress, unemployment, poverty and isolation for asylum

seekers and refugees.

The main areas of charitable activity to achieve the above organisational goals are the provision of:

Community development services to build capacity within refugee community organisations and to support the delivery of the key priorities enshrined in the Refugee Charter for Manchester

Legal advice and support to help people affected by poverty, unemployment, homelessness and immigration status

Volunteer programmes to provide meaningful work experiences and training to refugees and other members of the local community to enhance their employment prospects and to extend the reach of MRSN’s advice and other activities

5. Public Benefit

The main beneficiaries of the work of MRSN are individuals and families from refugee backgrounds and refugee community organisations (RCOs) across Greater Manchester. Individuals from refugee communities benefit directly from our advice services, and through our volunteer programme, and more indirectly through our community development work. The direct benefits of advice and advocacy include the relief of poverty through income maximisation, debt advice, finding accommodation for homeless people, and ensuring that people can get the immigration and asylum advice and services they need. Our services are all free of charge and benefit people who are poor and some who are destitute. Our community development work benefits not only those directly involved in running the refugee community organisations we work with, but, through enabling those organisations to operate more effectively, this work benefits all the members of those communities. In all our work we seek to empower people so that they gain understanding and confidence to manage their own lives and affairs and to participate more actively both in their own communities and in wider society. We provide RCOs with training, briefings, opportunities to meet service providers to improve services for people from refugee backgrounds, and support with fundraising to provide services and run activities for their own community members and to ensure the sustainability of their organisations.

6. Achievements and Performance

The achievements and performance of the charity are detailed in the attached Chair’s and service reports.

Chair’s Report

Being a trustee implies taking decisions that will influence peoples’ lives and remaining accountable. This gives an opportunity to us as individuals to offer our time, skills, knowledge and experience to help run this important Network for the good of all our Members, as well as for the good of the many thousands of refugees who benefit from MRSN services each year. I am grateful for the support and expertise of the Management Committee and for the help they have given me during the 1st year of my tenure as Chair of MRSN. It has been a time of strength, after the unrest of the years passed, and I would like to express my gratitude to the staff and volunteers for their enthusiasm, determination and dedication to make sure fantastic services have continued to be delivered even though with a much smaller budget.I’d like to stress the impact spending cuts have had on the voluntary sector and the new challenge that Brexit poses to the kind of work we do. However, I also consider this as an opportunity for us to rise to the challenge and examine the assets we have within our communities in order to move from a needs based approach into an assets based one for a better and sustainable MRSN community. I take this opportunity to appreciate the work, perseverance and commitment demonstrated by our former and current staff: James Allen, Belay Kahsay, Bill Longshaw and Sofia Kalu that have ensured the aims of MRSN have continued to be delivered. Their work has guaranteed that refugees facing difficulties with poverty, discrimination, homelessness, unemployment and isolation have continued to find hope and support at MRSN.

MRSN has also continued to take a leading role in ensuring the rights of those seeking safety and to organise activities to showcase the talents and contributions that refugees make to British society – we enjoyed a wonderful cross-cultural arts event at the Art Gallery Museum and a incredibly competitive Refugee World Cup football tournament at Albert Park in Salford as part of our Refugee Week celebrations in June 2016.

We are looking at the year ahead with hope as we celebrate the Heritage of 20 years legacy of MRSN’s work and we are confident that together we will find a better way in funding streams and/or other income generating opportunities.I would like to express our gratitude to Manchester City Council which, through its Equalities Fund, continues to support our vital work to develop strong and independent refugee community organisations – this is our core business and of vital importance, helping us as refugees to continue to assist members of our own communities. Chorlton High School (drama class) held an event to support the work of MRSN and subsequently delivered a performance at Art Gallery in June during our Refugee Week Launch. This helped raise £450 pound for MRSN. Our Heritage Lottery Project has now concluded and is due for Launch celebration event at the central library on the 3rd of December 2016.

I want to end this note with a big thanks to all our Funders, volunteers (including the MC members) and supporters.

Angel N Klaleta

Chair of MRSN Management Committee

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT REPORTIntroduction

The Community Development Service provides a range of support activities to help realise the following key aims of MRSN:

To support and empower Manchester’s refugee communities to establish and maintain strong organisations

To build a strong and vibrant network of refugee community organisations To give refugees and those seeking asylum a voice and to empower them to rep-

resent the needs and aspirations of their communities To reduce levels of stress, unemployment, poverty and isolation for people from

refugee communities To support people from refugee communities to access services and opportunit-

ies on an equal basis To improve public awareness

of refugee and asylum issues and to increase positive media representationFunding

The majority of our community development activity in 2015-16 was funded by Manchester City Council through the Equalities Fund. Our activity aimed to deliver on the following Equality and Manchester Board Priorities:

strengthen knowledge, understanding and evidence base about communities to increase community cohesion and design services that meet everyone’s needs

tackle discrimination and narrow the gap between disadvantaged groups to the wider community and between Manchester and the rest of the country

celebrate the diversity of Manchester and increase awareness of the positive contribution that our diverse communities make to the city

contribute to reducing the numbers of people out of work raise aspirations promote private sector growth

Activity and OutcomesYear 3 of our 3 year project successfully promoted and supported the integration of individuals and families from refugee communities in Manchester and celebrated their contributions to the city. We did this by offering tailored packages of advice, support, training and capacity building to assist established and newly-emerging refugee community organisations (RCOs) to develop their own responses and pro-jects to support and empower their own communities. We also provided information updates, developed events to celebrate Refugee Week, and set up regular meetings of the Refugee Network to drive forward our objectives to improve the employment prospects of refugees, improve health and education services, provide a voice for refugees through campaigning, and share refugee arts and culture.

One-to-one support

One-to-one support sessions were delivered to 11 established RCOs and 5 newly-formed organisations during the last year. Sessions included advice regarding gov-ernance arrangements and support to draft constitutions, help to identify community needs and develop projects to meet those needs, assistance with funding bids to de-liver those new services, support with setting up monitoring and evaluation pro-cesses, help with end of grant reports, practical support to open bank accounts and to access information and resources and assistance with developing and drafting policies.Training and developmentA total of 9 training sessions were coordinated and delivered throughout the year, enabling RCOs to develop their skills and knowledge in fundraising, UK education system, project management, governance and starting a business. All our training courses were delivered in partnership with relevant sector experts.

Information

The above activities were supplemented with the provision of information to ensure RCOs are kept up-to-date in terms of legislative, policy and service changes and also to signpost them to other sources of support, funding opportunities, community resources, and employment and training opportunities, which they then distribute to their community members. Over the last year six issues of the MRSN newsletter have been produced and distributed and regular e-bulletins have also been issued.Feedback By RCO MembersA focus group was held on 10th June 2015 to specifically answer the questions set out in the equality review user research, with two additional questions asked to try and understand the impact on the end user i.e. MRSN’s community development service works to establish strong and independent refugee community organisations (RCOs) run by skilled leaders and so we also wanted to understand the impact of that work on the individual community members supported by those RCOs as well as on the leaders of those groups

There were 15 participants representing 12 different refugee community organisations (RCOs). They were split into two groups, each with a facilitator and a note-taker, and asked the same set of questions.

1: Why did you access the community development service at MRSN?

We didn’t know there was anything else around; we came here with no lan-guage and no understanding of how things worked in the UK; MRSN became our 2nd home, they helped us so much to set up our group (Bosnian Supple-mentary School)

We needed advice and support and to increase our knowledge We needed help with training our volunteers MRSN understood where we were coming from (Zimbabwe Community) We tried others but they just bombarded us with emails and we couldn’t get

the help we needed (HCA - Afghani Community) They started us establishing a community – they brought us together We needed help and references to set up bank accounts for our groups

We needed funding Compared to other agencies MRSN was always willing to help and under-

stood the issue we faced Because MRSN is a refugee led it is relevant, accessible and practical The community development project is very useful for refugee groups- it is a

life line for the existence of refugee projects

2: What help did MRSN provide?

Setting up our constitution; becoming a charity Training – how to run our organisation, project management, governance

training for trustees Office space, equipment, materials, post-box Help with funding applications to run our groups; we are small organisations

and not recognised; MRSN provides advice, and support with reporting Connected us to other services; use of other venues Networking with other RCOs; enabled us to connect to other groups; linked to

different communities from different parts of the world – shared experiences, learned about similarities, learned from each other, reassured

Support, confidence, advice Information about employment opportunities, funding opportunities - newslet-

ter Training - self-employment workshops; volunteer training and volunteer oppor-

tunities Help with running activities, services Our members have gained considerable skills and developed confidence in

on self-employment andUK education systems MRSN introduced us to networks and sources of funding. Doors were opened

that were closed to us

3: How has this enabled you to help members of your own community – what’s the impact been on your community members?

We set up Homework Club to help improve the education of our children (in English, Maths and Science) with other RCOs – we got funding to employ 4 part-time tutors (MACO – Manchester Congolese Organisation)

Organising and planning activities We run supplementary school; funding helped us get teacher; brings our chil-

dren together; run cultural activities (Bosnian Supplementary School) Help with English for adults – helps them settle and integrate Cultural inclusion – bringing people together – sharing culture – sense of

solidarity

(UK) cultural awareness training for own girls – we widened this out to other girls from different communities – helped them understand the ways that people do things in the UK (ZIWO – Zimbabwe Women’s Organisation)

Made the Afghani community confident to find themselves, understand differ-ence (HCA)

Giving advice – health, welfare, advocacy, making referrals to other services (United Somali Bravanese Association)

Enables partnership working; expands activities

Refugee Network

Our quarterly Network meetings provided a hub through which we were able to deliver on our employment, service improvement and cultural development objectives.

We run four employment and enterprise workshops in partnership with Franchise Works, City South Manchester, Bubble Enterprise and Blue Orchid which provided training to expose people from refugee communities to the possibility of self-employment and private enterprise. This was then followed up by a series of one-to-one support sessions to enable individuals to progress their particular enterprise ideas. For example the project organized a workshop and one to one support on Micro enterprise loans and start up business support on 2nd September 2015 in partnership with Bubble enterprise and City South Manchester. The workshop and one to one support aimed to support refugees who have a business idea but need funding to get their business off the ground to help them with pre-start advice including ideas development and loan application process.

EdLab Project

MRSN and EdLab MMU are worked in partnership to support Refugee Community Organisations with the development of their work. MMU students have supported refugee groups in a range of ways to develop and strengthen in order to provide better services and support to their communities. The project helped Somali Women’s Group and MACO in running their lunch club and homework club.

EdLab is a student enrichment and employability project which aims to develop in-novative educational provision, practice and possibilities, through developing com-munity engagement with sustainable, genuine and positive impact and students are encouraged and supported to work with communities to solve problems and add value in inventive and enterprising ways. 

Refugee WeekCivic ReceptionAs part of Refugee Week 2015, Manchester City Council honoured Manchester Refugee Support Network by holding a Civic Reception to mark our 20th anniversary. The Lord Mayor of Manchester, Councillor Paul Murphy OBE, hosted the Reception in his apartments at Manchester Town Hall on Wednesday 17th June and gave a fantastic welcoming speech. Over 30 guests attended including representatives of our refugee community members, partners from Manchester Volunteer Advice Project, from Manchester Central Library archives and from Manchester City Council who commission our community development work through their Equality Fund. There was dancing by Noushin Babar from the Pakistani Refugee Organisation, singing by Neda Naser from the Eritrean community, a nostalgic and funny speech from our very first Chair, Dr. Ali Rahman, a presentation marking key moments in our 20 year history from our voluntary manager, Barbara Guest, and a reminder from Estelle Worthington, from the Regional Asylum Activism Project, that this year also marked the 15th anniversary of dispersal, and we heard audio clips from refugees telling the stories of their journeys to Manchester and the help and support they have received from the people of Manchester. The evening was rounded off by sharing food and a specially designed celebratory cake!

Refugee World CupOur 7-a-side football tournament was held at Ten Acre Lane Sports Complex, kindly provided for free via Manchester City Council`s sports development department. We had over 200 competitors taking part and the very wet weather didn`t dampen the enthusiasm of the players or of our DJ Abdul, who played great tunes and kept the football announcements going all day. Our thanks once again go to the FA for providing referees, bibs and footballs - we wouldn`t be able to do it without their support - or without the help of Salford Welcome Group. For the very first time the World Cup was retained by the previous year`s winners - Salford juniors..

Other Activities

Awareness raising and campaigning

During the last year, we increased awareness amongst mainstream agencies and host communities about the experiences, needs and contributions of refugees, through conducting four ‘Refugee Awareness’ workshops at Greater Manchester BME network, in schools and at trade unions events. For example the project delivered Refugee awareness workshop on 17th June 2015 for 200 high school students at Abraham Moss High school.

We continue to link up with other campaigning groups doing similar work around Greater Manchester and are a member of the United for Change group and worked closely with Regional Asylum Activism in lobbing to Members of Parliament to give asylum seekers permission to work if their claim for asylum is not processed by the Home Office within six months. We have worked and collaborated with Journalists and media (BBC, ITV and chan-nel 4) to help broaden public understanding of the refugee issues and challenge mis-conceptions. We will continue this work to ensure refugee voices are not ignored

Health and social Care Devolution Refugee Engagement even

As part of Greater Manchester’s Devolution agenda, for the first time Greater Manchester took control of £6 billion of public funding for health and social care from April 2016.This involve making decisions about some of the most important things in

our lives - such as health and social care. It will also mean the transfer of certain powers and responsibilities from national government to all 37 NHS Trusts and Local Authorities in Greater Manchester. Manchester Refugee Support Network as part of GMHSC Partnership worked across Greater Manchester to ensure that refugee voices are heard. We helped to build a collective understanding of what hinders or helps refugees and people seeking asylum from taking charge of their health and wellbeing and making healthy choices. The partnership won pride awards 2016.

The Ready for Work program

MRSN has worked in partnership with Business in the Community over the past few years referring refugees on to the Ready to work programme and supporting refugees to successfully complete 2 days of pre-employment training and a 2 week voluntary placement. This has helped refugees to gained employment through the programme with employers such as M&S, Royal Mail and other National and Local employers. The project also supported refugees to gain experience, develop their CV and receive a reference from a reputable company.

Support to other agencies

The project is often used as a first point of contact for statutory and voluntary agencies looking to reach out to refugees and people seeking asylum and has provided information, data and direct contact to ensure service providers are fully informed about the needs of people from refugee communities. This has enabled them to advertise their provision or adapt their provision.

Volunteering opportunity

Volunteers have had the opportunity to develop their skills and experience through

being involved in a range of activities. They have supported the advice service and the delivery of training and events e.g. volunteers were supported through the process of organising and running a highly successful Manchester refugee week celebration.

The project has been very successful in terms of diversity. Volunteers have originated from different countries, speak different languages and most of them are from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds. The reason for this success is that MRSN is a refugee led organisation which was already in contact with a wide network of refugees and asylum seekers through its community development, campaigning and advice work

Belay KahsayBelay KahsayCommunity Development Worker

Advice Service ReportThis year has been another year of blessings, celebrations, disappointments, frustrations, but above all one of determination and commitment of many people to bring justice and much needed support, a little hope and comfort to asylum seekers and refugees.Several of our clients have been granted leave to remain, It is often in these early days of settlement when additional help is needed to access work, benefits, find housing and furniture, get set up with utilities etc. It is also at this point we often need to refer them to food banks as there is a delay period between benefits when they are destitute.Greater Manchester has accepted a great number of asylum seekers this year and this has been reflected in our numbers of new clients and increase in numbers seen each day we are open. For the size of the city, we have more asylum seekers than Birmingham and other cities. It has become clear MRSN how important it is to support the health and well-being of our clients and to help them to integrate into society. It is not merely enough to make sure that they are linked to a doctor, education, and solicitor and have food to eat. Many have suffered bad experiences; have worries about family left behind, lost en – route, or children in refugee camps or with another parent or grandparent or family in war zones. There is plenty of time to think- for thoughts to buzz around and fears to expand. It is with this in mind that the welcome in our lovely drop – in advice service encourages a volunteer befriender to chat and advocate together over the issues and problems they face. This gives opportunity to meet others and build friendships.

We have also, through the hard work of our volunteer administrator, Community Development Worker and Generalist Advice Coordinator put on a work experience club to help our clients who is on Job Seekers Allowance to volunteer to gain work experience with MRSN and other organisations. All the contributions have given these opportunities without charge for which we are grateful. They have been much appreciated, build self – esteem and help with employment in the future. It also provides evidence for the courts that asylum seekers are beginning to engage in the community.

Thanks also to Yousuf, Rouzbeh, Mohammed, Saeed and Nada who continue to interpret on behalf of our clients so that they can have access to MRSN’S services. It is amazing how rapidly progress it made. Thanks also to those who have volunteer to make the drop – in advice service a success, without your contribution we would be unable to continue the demands to open our doors for these services.One of our aims over the years has been for Manchester to become a City of Sanctuary. This year, we saw a growth in numbers for accommodation and we welcome our hostels such as GCS, The Limes and Positive Lifestyles who has supported our clients over the past year with accommodation until present. We are sorry to have a few volunteers leave us this year – Mohamed, our Arabic and Saeed our Farsi interpreters, has been with us since the start of this project so it is strange without them and they will be missed. Thank you so much to these volunteers who give so much time. We are so fortunate to have new recruits who have been amazing in filing these gaps. There is still an enormous amount of work to be done in the future with continued unrest and injustice in the world!

Case Study of KasimAli Paiwandi – AfghanistanMr Paiwandi attended our drop – in advice service on 10/10/2016 with the hope to go back to Afghanistan. Mr Paiwandi inform our generalist advice coordinator that he would like MRSN to help him to go back to his country of origin. Our generalist advice coordinator contacted the IOM to inform them due to our client’s request. She was advice that if our client wants to go back, he needs to withdraw his asylum claim before they can assist him. Our generalist advice coordinator inform our client and advice him that she don’t think that is a wise decision. She inform our client that she will make some calls to help him to get an update on his claim. Mr Paiwandi told our generalist advice coordinator that he is currently destitute, and am so depressed, stressed, tired and fed up , he states I cannot work, no job, no house, no money , I have not seen my wife and children for the past 15 years. I claim asylum in 2004 and until date I have not heard anything from the Home Office. I want to go please help me to go ; Our generalist coordinator pause and talk to him calmly and ask him to give her an opportunity to make some calls to help him with his asylum claim. He agrees and she contacted Dallas Court Reporting Centre and were inform that Mr Paiwandi got his Leave to Remain on the 12/12/2014. She inform Dallas Court that our client do not have that leave and if it is possible for them to assist her further. Dallas Court give her some phone numbers to contact but all the numbers she contacted is not helping her at all. She decided to involve our clients MP Lucy Powell and our client’s MP wanted his Home Office reference number which our client do not know because he states that he has lost all his paperwork over the years been destitute.On Monday the 01/11/2016 she contacted Dallas Court and inform them that she needs Mr Paiwandi’s HO reference number and were ask if she had a form of authority, which she states yes and that was the break of the ice! Dallas Court now request for 2 times size passport pictures and also told her that our client got Indefinite Leave To Remain. This was the best news for our ears and we could not wait to inform our client. This was worthed the wait, patience pays off in the long run as the saying goes.

Statistics: of clients we have seen over this periodDrop –In Advice Service: a total of 518 clients attended.Immigration Session: a total of 171 clients we assist with Travel Documents, Naturalization and Replacement Biometric Residence Cards.

Sofia Kalu

General Advice Coordinator

Heritage project report for AGM.

Introduction

The Heritage project is now nearing completion. It was originally scheduled for com-pletion in October. However, as there were more than adequate resources in the project budget, it was decided to extend the deadline to the end of December. This would give time to complete work on all remaining outcomes to the highest possible standards. The project manager, who began another part-time job in late October, is currently working one day per week to bring all the strands of the project to a conclu-sion and is being assisted by a project volunteer (Alex Smith) who has now been taken on, on a free-lance basis) to assemble images and text for the digital exhibition opening in December at Manchester Central Library.

Work completed

The Project has completed work on the following outcomes:

Delivering a student project (in partnership with the University of Manchester) to create six fully transcribed oral history Interviews

Running an event to mark the launch of the project and another, in the form of a Refugee Cultural Festival to coincide with Refugee Week

Re-designing and relaunching the MRSN website, including new dedicated heritage pages

Turning MRSN’s records: including photos, documents and digital material into a fully catalogued archive for deposit in the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Rela-tions Resource Centre at Manchester Central Library.

Developing a digital time-line as a way of making the archive accessible to a large audience through the MRSN heritage pages on the website

Training a group of volunteers to complete 20 Oral History interviews with key figures in MRSN’s history.

Creating an interim exhibition at the library highlighting the project’s oral his-tory recording

Producing a piece of research placing the organisation in a national political context to act as an introduction to the archive.

Work still to complete

The remainder of the project work will concentrate on the display and dissemination of the material, so that it can be enjoyed by a diverse audience, who should find the material informing, inspirational and thought provoking.

The remaining work will include completing the digital time line to include as much archive material as possible. In other words, both visual and audio material reflecting the findings of the project’s research and Oral history work. Work still to complete in-cludes:

Producing an eye-catching brochure celebrating the project and telling the in-spiring story of MRSN.

Organising a digital exhibition within the Radical Voices section of the Archives+ at Manchester Central Library.

Organising a final celebration event at the Library to mark the completion of the project and to showcase the website, exhibition, publication etc.

Create a pop-up exhibition-for use by MRSN in future events and to tour local libraries.

Create a legacy event-any remaining funding could be used to run an event encouraging other RCOs to conduct their own heritage projects.

Final tasks will include the creation of an evaluation report and financial re-porting to HLF, in order to secure the draw-down of the final 10% of the grant.

Conclusion

The project has now completed (or is in the process of completing) nearly all of its agreed outcomes. It has helped to raise awareness of MRSN and the valuable work that it continues to do. What has become very clear in the 20+ oral Histories that have been carried out is the great affection that people have for MRSN. The project aims to show this and celebrate 20 years of remarkable achievements.

Bill Longshaw,

Heritage project Manager