The Refugee Culture Project is a social & cultural outreach program that tries to bring culture and joy back in to the life's of refugees in the north of France. Who and What are we:
We're a small group of volunteers that have worked with & for over a year and a half. While working with these organisations we noticed that the people we were trying to help have no joyous or
cultural outlet and frankly are extremely bored. Since this boredom can lead to depression, anti-social behaviour and in extreme cases violence we have decided to try and fight said boredom by bringing joy and culture back into the lives of these refugees. What do we do:
In collaboration with Utopia56, HelpRefugees and RCK (Refugee Community Kitchen) we take volunteers to distribution sites of these organisation. At these sites we bring music, a physical activity (football, cricket, sports & games) and a passive activity (drawing, literature, live music/instruments). By engaging a community into these activities for a few hours we try and give them something to look forward to and be happy with. What do we want to achieve:
We will try to bring joy back into the lives of the refugees in Calais, and there by fighting depression, anti-social behaviour and the effect of boredom. Eventually our secondary goal will be to get cultural groups to come and volunteer with us to do large scale activities. By bringing people from different ethnic groups together we hope to create a social cohesion between different cultures and belief systems. "A smile is the difference between survival and life"
- A volunteer -
