End of Year Celebration and ‘Together with Refugees’ Campaign

Staff and students at Halesowen College are always thinking of new ways to ensure their students feel like an integral part of the college community, no matter the course they are on or their individual backgrounds.

At the end of the summer term Halesowen students and staff from the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) department celebrated their hard work after a difficult year by holding a celebration event. The afternoon involved a football match, games, cultural dancing and a picnic where everyone brought some food to share. As a College of Sanctuary, events like this also help a lot of students by creating opportunities for them to socialise in a safe and welcoming environment.

The College have also held a Craft Club event and invited staff and students to come along and create orange hearts as our contribution to the ‘Together With Refugees’ orange heart campaign. Students could cut out and decorate orange hearts, create paper hearts using origami techniques or learn to crochet a heart. These have been displayed amongst the trees along our nature trail walk which surrounds the main College Campus, as a striking installation to show the College’s support of and empathy towards refugees.

Many thanks to the fantastic Halesowen College Team for organising this work, and especially to Kelly Forrester who shared this story with us at CoS UK.