By Maggie Sawant, First Year Law
On Wednesday 20 February, Student Action for Refugees (STAR) welcomed prospective students from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds to the University of Bristol.
On this Information Day, the prospective students enjoyed a tour of the campus, a presentation explaining the university application process, a question and answer session about university life, and taster lectures by Matthew Lee and Gareth Griffith.
STAR volunteer Stephanie Hall commented that ‘the day was really successful, and we had lots of positive feedback from all of the participants.’
This event is part of STAR’s ‘Equal Access’ campaign, which since 2008 has been promoting access to higher education for refugees and asylum seekers and ensuring that they are able to join university as equals. This current week is Bristol STAR's 'Action Week'.
Next week is Bristol STAR's (Student Action for Refugees) Action Week! In the Living Room, don't miss the Equal Access Campaign bake sale on Monday and the Families Together Campaign awareness event on Friday. See all the events throughout the week here: https://t.co/nzI7UuTeNB pic.twitter.com/2bJ58TrXL4
— Bristol SU (@Bristol_SU) February 23, 2019
Refugees and asylum seekers currently face many barriers to obtaining a place at university - asylum seekers receive £37 per week from the government and are not legally permitted to work. Furthermore, if they go to university, they must pay international fees, which are higher than the fees UK or EU nationals would pay.
The University of Bristol, alongside 61 institutions across the UK, currently offer ‘Sanctuary Scholarships’ to refugees and asylum seekers, which consist of a fee waiver for tuition fees and a £10,000 bursary towards living costs. The University is one of the UK’s leading universities in this area, offering 32 Sanctuary Scholarships.
The core purpose of the tour is ‘to tell Bristol’s children of refugee backgrounds that...opportunity will be open to them’.
However, many asylum seekers and refugees do not have the support networks required to navigate and understand the university system and applications. Therefore, STAR’s work in bridging this gap is vitally important.
For example, STAR also runs a ‘buddy scheme’, where sanctuary scholars are partnered with university students in later years at University. In addition to this, STAR runs a twice-weekly homework club, where University students offer help to children from refugee backgrounds at the Barton Hill Settlement in Lawrence Hill.
On Friday, the University again opened its doors and welcomed 26 of these children and nine of their mothers. The organiser, Natasha Langford, said that the core purpose of the tour is ‘to tell Bristol’s children of refugee backgrounds that...opportunity will be open to them’ and that the University community would be ‘thrilled’ to welcome them’.
Epigram reported in December about further work that University of Bristol students are undertaking to help asylum seekers.
Featured image: Maggie Sawant / Epigram
Do you think that the University could be doing even more to help refugees and asylum seekers? Let us know below.
