Hiba was 12 years old and living in Mogadishu when her life was turned on its head by the civil war raging in Somalia. “My father was killed and I had to flee with my half-sister who was 30 and we travelled to Ethiopia,” she said. “There were about 40 of us in a lorry. It took us two weeks and I saw some terrible things along the way. There was lots of stop and go, lots of us having to hide from danger, travelling only at night and having to keep calm - and I saw a lot of dead people lying on the ground.”
Five years later, when Hiba’s older half-brother - who was living in London - got her a visa to the UK, her life was severely disrupted again. “My first impressions of England were that it was cold and I felt frightened,” she said. “My half-brother left London soon after and so I knew nobody. I was 17 and alone. My father was dead, my mother was living somewhere unknown, I spoke no English, I had to move in with distant relatives I barely knew - I felt very, very alone.”
Hiba, whose name has been changed, said her integration into UK society only began when a relative took her to a local community centre in west London where she began to volunteer for a charity called Midaye Somali Development Network. She worked as a helper, making tea and coffee for the supplementary school they ran teaching English and Maths to high school children.
Hiba, now 37 and a married mother of four children, would later become a paid member of Midaye’s staff and today is a senior project officer and a group leader. “Midaye helped me at the most vulnerable point in my life,” she said. “It was not just what I learned on their programmes, but by volunteering I was able to talk to people and integrate into the community and do something useful with my life. It was because of them that I applied to a West London college where I got my GCSEs in English and Maths and then studied health and social care and got my level 4 qualification.”
Midaye Somali Development Network is one of the charities being funded by a £50,000 grant from our winter appeal in partnership with Comic Relief, A Place to Call Home, which seeks to help London’s two most disadvantaged groups, refugees and people experiencing homelessness.
Founded in 2002, Midaye was set up to help Somali refugee mothers with children under five but over time expanded its remit to include all migrant communities living in west London who do not speak English as a first language. Last year they helped around 1,400 people, three-quarters of them women, by running seven major events and 45 workshops a week, including swimming and knitting lessons and advice and information sessions.
Filsan, a former refugee who now heads up Midaye, said: “Our main aim is to empower refugees. These people have fled violence, civil war and human rights abuses and they arrive here very vulnerable, the majority of them barely speaking English. We offer them practical skills including English and Maths and mental health support in groups as well as in one-to-one sessions.”
Like Filsan, most of their 22 staff members have lived experience. For Hiba, running sewing machine and swimming sessions and special needs groups for refugees is both a joy and a challenge. “I love to help people but when I hear their stories, I get flashbacks to my own trauma,” she said. “I remember it like yesterday. Most of the time I try and block out these memories because otherwise I cannot sleep.”
She added: “During my time in Ethiopia, I didn’t go to school. My sister worked and fed us, but it wasn’t a case of three meals a day. We ate once a day. There were people in worse situations than me. I saw people starving, I knew hunger. For a long time, it was just me and my sister. We got very close and she became like my mother. When I came to London, it was without my sister so I had to start all over again.”
The fact that Hiba was able to build a life with the help of Midaye gives her confidence that she can help other young refugees who arrive here utterly bereft do the same. “Their stories touch my heart,” she said. “The women we help are often single mothers with little English. They are not allowed to work by the Home Office which causes massive problems because the tiny amount of money they are given means they cannot afford both food and transport and have to choose food, so they get very isolated. Most of them cannot even afford nappies for their children. It’s an extremely tough situation. I am proud that Midaye can be there to accompany and empower them and make their lives that bit more bearable.”
In a nutshell
Our winter appeal, A Place to Call Home, in partnership with Comic Relief, is seeking to help fund organisations in London and across the country that support asylum seekers and people experiencing homelessness.
To make a donation, visit: comicrelief.com/winter
How you can help
£10 could provide a young person travel to meet a wellbeing mentor and have a hot meal
£50 could provide travel to work or school for a month for an at-risk youth
£150 could refurbish a bike for an adult refugee giving them freedom to travel independently
£500 could train ten people with experience of homelessness to become homeless health advocates £1,000 could enable one of our partners to fully support a young person throughout the year
