Looking back on a year of activities empowering refugee women and youth
As the summer officially starts, so does it mark the end of another cycle of activities In the SB Espoir project. So, we take this opportunity to reflect on the year, and thank everyone who was part of the activities, you readers for keeping up to date, everyone who supported us, and especially our volunteers who joined the activities.
We will come back in September with more activities at the 4 centres. If you want to join the SB Espoir program as a volunteer just send us an email. In the meantime, we leave you with some of the highlights from the activities this year.
Launching the “Son Choix, Son Avenir” extension of SB Espoir: After months of planning and learning about women’s needs we created SB OverSeas new project: “Son Choix Son Avenir” (her choices, her future) a project that is now focusing on promoting social inclusion, personal development and access of opportunities.
“Sa Santé, Son Avenir” activity
On Sunday April 14, 2019 we had the opportunity to do our first activity at the Croix-Rouge de Belgique center in Jette, the activity theme was “sa santé, son avenir” we talked about healthy eating, made together granola and decorated jars for the granola that the women and our volunteers took home.
Pizza-making activity
Homemade pizza was for dinner on Saturday 22 June, 2019 at the women’s asylum seeker reception centre where we prepared pizza together from scratch for the whole center.
During the activity everyone received and SB recipe book, which they could personalize with different craft materials. These books will hold all the recipes from the activities we have done and the ones we will do in the future, this way once they leave the centre they can always consult the book and prepare the recipes on their own.
These are some highlights from the activities with the youth at the centres in Woluwe Saint-Pierre, Uccle and Neder-Over-Heembeek.
Visiting Mini Europe with the youth at Uccle and Woluwe Saint-Pierre
When we visited Mini Europe with SB Espoir, the youth illustrated this juxtaposition: the western volunteer who upon seeing the Big Ben replica talked about her time visiting London, and the young refugee talking about the police in Hungary that beat him at the border.
Building a hydraulic-powered maze
Can 4 people who all speak a different language make it through a maze by working together?
We were challenged to do this today at the Fedasil Woluwe Saint Pierre Centre that hosts asylum seeking young people. In the groups we made for this activity the youth had few common languages to communicate, however we made it work. Check out the video to see how we manage to do this activity.
Problem-solving workshop
With the youth from Uccle and Avi from Pathways Institute for Negotiation Education, we learned about negotiation and what skills that are useful for day-to-day life.
Through a series of activities, the youth learned that it’s always most important to ask the question “why” when you want something from someone, or they want something from you.
Friendly football game
“This was the best football match in my life ever,” an ecstatic rain-drenched goalkeeper exclaimed to the group gathered on a pitch.
It was a brisk Brussels Sunday afternoon in Ixelles, where the refugee youth from the Red Cross Centre in Uccle were playing their first full-pitch match against graduate students from the Brussels School of International Studies (BSIS).
Music with Violet vzw
Music, dancing and breaking barriers all of these elements were brought to the youth at the Fedasil Centre in Neder-Over-Heembeek with the help of Violet vzw, a youth orchestra group from Oud-Heverlee, Belgium.
Want to support the activities and workshops we do with refugee youth in Belgium and have more testimonies like this? Join our team of volunteers
