Advanced Digital Skills for Youngsters & Refugees

"Having worked and lived in the USA and the Near East, my experience and the research indicates overwhelmingly that overqualified migrants tend to return home, when possible"- Charley Weber. 

Traditionally a producer & editor working in film in the USA and Turkey, Charley’s documentary credits include: The Right to Decide for Planned Parenthood NYC, The Earthquake Relief Documentary by Can Dundar & Saatch’s Turkey and the James Earl Jones Biography, for A&E, for which he won an award. While in Turkey, Charley experienced firsthand the plight of Kurdish youngsters living on the streets and shining shoes, between bouts of sniffing glue .

Since returning to the UK in 2016, Charley has released a book on the good and bad growing up in the heart of counterculture and earned a Masters of Research in Digital Arts and Technology, while training and assessing level 3 & 4 apprentice Content Producers and Broadcast Technicians for the main UK qualifications companies, including AIM and Summit Qualifications. 

This is phase one of a community project to test equipping cohorts of refugees and displaced youngsters with advanced digital, media and research skills. If successful, a second phase will be initiated, involve funding for a year-round program training a number of youngsters in a bricks and mortar site in Newquay, near the Airport in Cornwall.

The shocking facts and figures: By the end of 2022, 108.4 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations. This includes: 35.3 million refugees, 62.5 million internally displaced people, 5.4 million asylum seekers and 5.2 million people in need of international protection, a majority from Venezuela.

By the end of September 2023, more than 114 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide. This marks the largest ever single-year increase in forced displacement in UNHCR’s history, propelled by the war in Ukraine and other deadly conflicts.