PENHA has secured a small grant from the National Lottery Community Fund for its project focused on the integration of migrants – Beyond managing expectations: Supporting the integration of refugees in Kent.
Kent County Council (KCC) hosts a large number of minors and 18+ asylum seekers and refugees, many from East Africa. These vulnerable young people struggle to adapt to life in the UK. Small-scale interventions provide basic living necessities and some advice on managing expectations but lack a focus on integration. KCC’s June 2021 report showed that its services reached breaking point and it has stopped accepting new asylum seekers.
Recent interviews with young refugees and frontline professionals indicate a need for culturally-sensitive support, particularly on sexual consent and the law, since their culture often does not consider sexual abuse as a crime. Some young men fear starting up a close relationship in the UK, and others end up in prison due to a lack of legal awareness.
The project will engage 250 East African migrants, asylum seekers and refugees aged 16-25 and provide training by experienced youth workers on healthy sexual relations and relevant UK laws. The project has four components: conducting intercultural dialogue workshops in their mother tongues to discuss sexual relationships and consent; producing a booklet of eight sexual abuse cases to be complied by the young people, with support from their mentors and distributed in print and digitally; producing multilingual pictorial pamphlets (cartoons) on healthy sexual relationships; and short inter-centre non-verbal drama competitions on sexual abuse and the consequences in the UK.
In this year-long project (March 2022-February 2023), PENHA will work with new asylum seeker and refugee reception centres in Kent, the police, and Ashford, Canterbury, Tonbridge and Folkestone colleges. The project builds on previous PENHA projects in Kent.
