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Our volunteers – Becky Forecast

By Mark Cox
July 13, 2009 at 6:02 pm

In this interview, Becky Forecast talks about how she spent 12 productive and rewarding weeks in Manchester planning a series of events for Refugee Week.

Our volunteer – Becky Forecast

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Mark: Are you hoping to work in the charity sector? The British Red Cross offers volunteer internships, generally lasting between 8 and 12 weeks that will help develop your professional skills, boost your CV and of course, enable us to reach even more people. In this interview, Becky Forecast talks about how she spent 12 productive and rewarding weeks in Manchester, planning a series of events for Refugee Week.

Becky: My name is Becky Forecast and I’m volunteering with the British Red Cross as the Refugee Week intern. Over the last 10 to12 weeks, I’ve been coordinating and planning sessions in schools and community groups to raise awareness about refugees and asylum seekers. The internship program is a 10 to 12 week program so I initially started with planning sessions and organising places where I could go and run the sessions, all sort of coming to a head this week, in Refugee Week running the sessions in schools and community groups.

The response has been really good. Common misconceptions amongst not just young people but a lot of people in our community about refugees and asylum seekers; there is lots of confusion between the two. Its been quite rewarding to see the surprise that people have when they learn that we don’t have 90 percent of the asylum seekers in the world coming to the UK, its only a small percentage and learning what backgrounds they’ve come from. Often people are very surprised because they have these ideas already that we’re challenging and its really great to see these ideas flipped around.

I put a lot of work into the sessions to make sure that they are fun and interactive, as well as being informative especially with the young people and the schools, to try and really engage them in the material and make it less like a lesson and more interactive. One method that I’ve been using is to use famous celebrities and getting them to guess different footballers and pop singers, which ones have been refugees and which ones aren’t, and doing quizzes so that you’ve got a lot of interaction between the children and myself, also dividing them up into groups so that they can discuss things together as well.

Personally, I get a lot out of volunteering especially with something like Refugee Week because it’s just very rewarding to see people becoming more aware. You see the light go on and they think wow I didn’t know that, and I think in changing attitudes towards refugees which is what Refugee Week is all about that it’s really important and I believe that on a personal level as well. So for me if I know that during Refugee Week I’ve reach so many people that feels like a job well done.

I think in the light of the recent events in the north west of England, especially with the BNP being elected, that it’s really more important to speak to people and challenge ideas that people have in the media about refugees and asylum seekers. And that’s another reason why it’s important in the north west. The project will reach a lot of young people during Refugee Week, its hard to put a number on it exactly, we’ve got almost 400 pupils at one of the big schools we have been working at, numerous evening sessions with Scout and Guide groups, and also not just young people, we’re doing a session next week with the South Manchester Book Club, where they’ve chosen a novel which is written by a refugee author to discuss in their session. It’s hard to say exactly but definitely in the hundreds.

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Tags: refugee services, Refugee Week, Volunteering

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