We are a group of more than 20 young people from all different parts of the world with at least one thing in common - we live in Wales!
I personally would like to say that leaving your home country is never easy, you miss everything, even the things that there you considered unimportant - so this is why you miss even your annoying neighbour. Wales is a place that all of us are now calling home. Home ... I would say that this is the second most important word after family, it is the place where we live and we are part of the community!
Young Migrant and Welsh is a project of where we have experienced all of these things.
We are a group of more than 20 young people from all different parts of the world with at least one thing in common - we all live in Wales. All of us were volunteering, and I really would like to thank all participants that really have done an amazing job. I am so proud and lucky that I participated in this project! The volume of the work, and the responsibility that most of us took on was very big, it was something challenging and at the same time exciting with so many new things to learn. Volunteering on this project was involved a lot of give and take. We gave a lot from our time and we made an amazing project where our main aim was to show everybody our feelings, for the Welsh community to change their idea of the migrants, and to challenge our own expectations about Wales. To have your work valued by many other people, with the support of many sponsors and partners, helped us to express our own personal ideas and point of views. Our main part of the project that we couldn’t decide about for a long time was the idea of the tree that we needed to show in the exhibition. There were hundreds of ideas and explanations given on everybody’s points of view, but in the end with the consensus of everybody, we decided our own ideas about the details of the tree. The tree was chosen because it personified everybody’s personal growth and development. The long life of the tree expressed our vision for the project, the journey of the migrants and the roots represented our heritage and the growth and the rise of each of us. So, I really think that we did a great job on understanding each other and on deciding on one thing that everybody agreed on the end!
We would like to thank the organisations which helped us to make our project a reality, supporting EYST as the place that gathered us all together and made sure we could work and create a project like this! Another big thank you to Swansea Waterfront Museum, for giving us the opportunity to show to the wider community our project and for the hours that gave us to work in the museum! Most importantly, thank you to our sponsor Heritage Lottery Fund, for believing in our project, and for funding our Subway's that fed us all the way through!!
Rudina Koka
Young, Migrant & Welsh Volunteer
