Meet STAR: the UoN society supporting refugees

The Student Action for Refugees society, or STAR, is a national charity but it’s biggest branch is here in Nottingham.

STAR provides students a unique opportunity to volunteer and support Refugees in Nottingham to integrate into the community and develop teaching and conversation skills, mostly done through their Tuesday Night Conversation Class.

They also devote time to campaigning for Refugee Rights.

Next week is their Action Week, an opportunity to let students know about the society and the good it is doing, as well as raise money for the Tuesday evening conversation class. Members of the society will also being trying to get signatures for their ongoing equal access campaign, which asks UoN to step up in the bid to help refugees gain access to higher education.

“Our uni needs to step up and financially support refugees attempting to gain higher education. Even Trent do it!”

STAR is running a petition which you can find out more about and sign here.

students a one of the Tuesday evening conversation classes

With so much going on next week, we sat down with members of STAR to find out what they will be getting up too.

“We have a big range of events from bake sales to a pub quiz with Ocean Tickets up for grabs.”

The ‘Fiver Challenge’ is also launching next week, challenging STAR members to live under the same limitations as many refugees in the UK.

“Many asylum seekers in the UK are not allowed to work, and are reliant on our government to get by. They are given only £5 a day to live off, and during our Action Week we are challenging our members to live off only a fiver a day – including food, clubbing, internet usage on their phones! The sponsorship money we raise via this link will go towards helping us to support refugees in Nottingham attempting to further their education.”

The importance of the work that STAR is doing seems even more relevant in the wake of the recent political changes around the world.

When asked about the recent American election, representatives from STAR had this to say, “As a society, we are non-political. Personally, that’s a different story! For UoN STAR, helping refugees is about helping our fellow humans. We were doing important work to help refugees before Trump’s administration, and hope our society’s work continues long after.”

You can get involved with STAR in the following ways:

“Come to our Tuesday Night Conversation classes!- all the details are on our Facebook Group.”

Get involved with the Action Week activities and giveaways – keep an eye on whats happening here.

Sponsor their ‘Fiver Challenge’ here.

Sign the equal access petition here.