Cost of Living grant recipient: Refugee Education UK

Refugee Education UK is helping traumatised children to rebuild their lives and plan for their future. To support its work, we’ve provided the charity with a £75,000 grant and £75,000 loan through our Cost of Living Programme.

Social Need

Education is one of the most important elements of improving someone’s life chances. However, children who are refugees have often missed several years of schooling. They may have been unable to go to school due to war or been denied the chance of an education due to their gender, nationality or circumstances. When they arrive in the UK, the trauma these children have experienced, combined with the language barrier, differences in teaching styles and financial issues, makes it even more difficult for them to catch up with their peers.

Catherine Gladwell, Chief Executive of Refugee Education UK, adds, “We work with young people who have experienced torture, who have seen family members killed and who have had to escape from very dangerous situations. When they arrive in the UK, they’re full of hope at being able to restart their education and rebuild a life in peace, but they often face a long wait to get into school.”

Solution

Refugee Education UK helps children and teenagers to access education and gain qualifications, right from primary school through to university level. It supports them in a number of ways, including through one-to-one mentoring and study groups and by advising them on their rights. Crucially, it also provides a warm, safe environment where children can do their homework, access the internet and meet others in a similar situation.

Catherine says, “Education is so powerful because it’s one of the very few forward-looking things in the life of a refugee child who has lost so much. It sends a really clear message of hope and shows them that people believe their future is worth investing in.”

Cost of Living Grant and Loan

We supported the charity with a £75,000 loan through our Cost of Living blended finance programme. The programme includes match funding from Access – The Foundation for Social Investment, so Refugee Education UK has benefited from £150,000 of funding altogether.

As Catherine explains, the children who Refugee Education UK supports have been hard hit by the cost of living crisis, “We’ve seen a massive increase in children not being able to access the internet outside of school so not being able to do their homework. More kids are not sleeping well at night in winter because there’s no heating and it’s too cold. It’s also affected schools in terms of the amount of funding that they receive for newly arrived children.”

Refugee Education UK is using its grant and loan to increase services, including the provision of drop-in study spaces, financial education, workshops, one-to-one sessions, and mental health and wellbeing services. Staff have also received cost of living pay increases and psychosocial support.

Impact

Education is a chance for children who have experienced horrific things to have a more normal life and focus on the years ahead. As one child shared, “For me, education is freedom. It opens doors and clears your way. It’s like walking from darkness into light. When you are educated you get knowledge, wisdom, understanding and a future.”

Resilience

The services provided by Refugee Education UK are, in many cases, life-changing, but most of its programmes do not generate any income for the charity. Instead, it raises money through grants, donations, consultancy and research work and by delivering training to education providers. The charity is working to further diversify its income by hiring out event spaces and meeting rooms and by developing more paid-for partnerships with schools.

Catherine adds, “The grant and loan have enabled us to unlock some of our unrestricted funding, which we’ve been able to invest in increasing the hours of the staff member who runs our subscriber network for over 1,000 education professionals. We’re moving the network to a paid subscription model and using it to promote our training services, none of which we would have been able to do if we hadn’t increased that staff member’s hours.”

The flexibility of the blended finance Cost of Living Programme was important for Refugee Education UK; Catherine explains, “The blended grant loan component of the finance meant that the charity was able to invest in income generating activities with enough lead-in time to build income gradually before repaying the loan”.

Future Plans

Refugee Education UK wants to equip schools to better support pupils who have recently arrived in the UK. It already offers training but is now creating an eight-week course, which it will deliver directly to schools.

The charity is also looking at the role education could play in creating safe and legal resettlement routes.

Most importantly, it wants to reach even more children and teenagers, supporting them throughout their education so that they can build the future that they deserve.

A 15-year-old Ukrainian refugee shared, “Lot of time I am feeling sad or like I am thinking about the past but you help me think about the future. Also, you have table tennis and snacks and books I can read… everything about this place is helping me with my learning. One day I want to go back to my country and be an engineer to build all the stuff that is now broken.”