The “Welcome Getaway” Project

One of the main purposes of Monakka Monowar Welfare Foundation is to make sure the Bangladeshi people in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets don’t slip into inactiveness and social isolation. For this purpose it implements various projects to mainly target the above-average unemployment rates among the young members of the community in question.

The Purpose of The “Welcome Getaway” Project

… was to mainly welcome new young Bangladeshi immigrants and help them feel like home in the vibrant city of London. The diversity, business and, unfortunately, the harsh job market can be intimidating to every newcomer. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for young Bangladeshi people to find it difficult to integrate outside the Bangladeshi community and their family, to find a job, and exercise their rights. This is often caused by the fact that they are not familiar of all the resources and services available to them, as well as different other opportunities for socializing, better health care and education. For this reason MMWF together with the Triangle Trust 1949 Fund organized a series of activities, workshops and meetings to provide these young people with peer-to-peer support networks, and other useful tips and resources.

"Welcome Getaway" Project

The Project Was...

1. ... on a peer-to-peer basis, which means for every participant there was a volunteer who was responsible to provide the training and support needed.

2. ...  implemented over a series of weekly and monthly meetings. Peers had the freedom to organize their weekly activities, workshops and meetings, while MMWF was responsible to organize the monthly meetings.

3. ...  about life and work in London - “Money Saving”, “”CV writing” and “Know your Rights and Duties”were just some of the topics covered. Their purpose was to help young people get used to life in London quicker, adapt and socialize easier.

4. ...  successful and rated high by participants.

MMWF - The Welcome Gateway

MMWF - The Welcome Gateway 

Funded by: The Triangle Trust 1949 Fund
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The gloomy economic climate is making it more and more difficult for young, new immigrants to the UK to find themselves successful in the job market. Keeping this in mind we, MMWF decided that The Welcome Gateway project will be of huge benefit to the young Bangladeshi immigrants that live in Tower Hamlets. These new migrants are often extremely vulnerable and do not know their rights, how to go about searching for a job and are not familiar with the local and national services. This often results in them being exploited, working underpaid and outside the protection of the law as well as being locked inside exclusive ethnic communities with few chances for integration. To take a step towards changing that, we have carried out this project which aims to provide these young migrants the opportunity to explore and represent their vocational necessities and identity them in a creative way for a career pathway.

Project structure  

The project is structured as a series of workshops, visits to local resources and daily open services, all centred on a peer to peer support network. For the peer to peer support work, we had the migrant participants working with willing volunteer peers which consisted of people who are well settled here in the UK. Each participant was paired with a volunteer who would be a source of support as well as a mentor for the participant. The volunteers were provided with necessary training so as to better perform their role. We have allowed each pair of peer and participant to carry out and organise their own weekly activities, meetings and outings, making sure to provide steadfast support to the peer to peer process to make sure everyone gets the best out of it. We were also responsible for the monthly meetings/group workshops which involved both the participants and peers to start the ‘Know your Rights and Duties’ information session and the ‘Saving Money’ session with the participants and their peers. There were also some sessions organised particularly for the participants such as ‘CV writing’ workshop as well as a visit to the local Job Centre. 

Our achievements 

The ‘Welcome Gateway’ project aimed to provide immediate and effective support to the participating new Bangladeshi migrants, as this would lead to them being able to better manage life in London. Further more importantly, the endeavour was to open the gateway in the formation of new routes for these new to the country towards our goals of integration outside their own community. Therefore, the peer-to-peer network support outside their own narrow society introduced the participants to deal and cope with a much wider audience of Londoners drawn from a great variety of world social circumferences that constitute the greater British multi-cultural social fabric.

Project feedback 

Hassan Ali :  "The project helped me a lot and allowed me to understand what routes I should take to have a good career"  

Mustafizur Rahman : "The project was very interesting and I have learnt many skills" 

Sadek Ahmed : "Really enjoyed the project and the support I received was great" 

Fahim Asad : "I have learnt many rights and duties which I have and also learnt how to save money"  

Iqbal Hussain: "The advice I received was very helpful and the support from all the staff were excellent"