Want to make a difference to the lives of Afghan families in the UK?
We are urgently trying to raise £18,500 to provide vital information and cultural integration support for Afghan families who have been evacuated across the UK.
All the funds raised will directly help families get support from Afghan professionals - to better understand life in the UK, improve their well-being and support their integration into their new communities in the UK. We are creating first language resources to address issues with mental health challenges and help with cultural integration - by directly sharing key information, and helping people with no formal education to learn to speak, read and write in English.
Here's more information about our project...
'I had to leave my home and my country'
In August 2021, thousands of people from Afghanistan were brought to the UK after the Taliban took over the country. You may remember watching the dramatic news reports from Kabul airport as people tried to leave.
'We're waiting for somewhere to live, somewhere where the children can play'
Since then, many Afghan families have been living in UK hotels in cramped conditions waiting for a home to become available. It has been a stressful and disorientating time for many - far away from friends and family, not yet able to start the process of settling into a new community.
'I've never written my name before'
Many of the women have never been to school, as the Taliban was in charge of the country when they were growing up. Never having held a pen or written their names even in their own language, learning English is a huge challenge.
'Afghans are supporting Afghans'
At Bright Path Futures we’ve found ways to make this transition easier, and have been working with families to help them adjust to their new life in the UK:
Cultural integration
We’re supporting people in adapting to cultural differences so that they are less scared and more confident about integrating into what is often a confusing and scary new world for them.
Building a great team of facilitators and teachers
We're building a team of skilled, professional people from Afghanistan - whose careers have been interrupted, but who have time and are passionate about helping their own people - who can visit hotels across the country and help prepare families to embark on their new life here in the UK. The majority of the funds raised will cover the direct costs of employing these facilitators.
About the Bright Path Futures project - who's paying and who's collaborating
The Bright Path Futures project is being generously sponsored by the University of Leicester, so all our core project costs (staffing, admin, expenses etc) are already covered.
The money raised here is to be used exclusively to allow us to extend our work beyond Leicester to the rest of the UK, in collaboration with the British Red Cross.
The more we raise, the more workshops and teaching we can fund - it's as simple as that. In the (unlikely!) event of having any money unspent, it will be donated to the British Red Cross to fund their vital work helping Afghan families here and in Afghanistan.
Afghan language resources for wellbeing, literacy and language
We’ve teamed up with Little Challenges and our sponsor Mondi to create an Afghan language version of the Amiko cards - an easy access wellbeing resource. (You can check these out on https://www.brightpathfutures.com/amikocards.)
We're also creating easy-to-use literacy and language resources in Afghan languages, which the UK Government Home Office are helping us to share across the UK - and we're planning to send both these and the Amiko Cards back to Afghanistan to help girls and women there continue their learning from home.
We need your help
We've piloted our approach in Leicester so we know it works. Now we're ready to scale it up so that we can help to support many more people across the UK. But to do that, we need your help.
Every donation to Bright Path Futures will make a difference - no matter how small. The more we raise, the more people we can directly support - it's that simple. Your contribution will make a real difference to Afghan families in great need.
Thank you in advance for your kind and generous support!
www.brightpathfutures.com