My Social Enterprise visit to Hungary ’16

Being an immigrant myself and having lived through the late 70’s and early 80’s and experienced first-hand some of the tensions that being a immigrant  in a ‘alien’ neighbourhood brings I thought the dark days of examples such as below, had long passed.

However having worked in many West Midlands schools & witnessed first hand examples of the tensions that currently exist between ‘local residents’ and new migrants to the UK in my area, I noticed a worrying trend leading up to the ‘Brexit’ vote and post this referendum of ever increasing tensions and hostilities.

The West Midlands and Wolverhampton in particular have many migrants from Eastern Europe originating from countries such as Hungary, Slovenia & Slovakia and many of their customs cultures and traditional are jostling for their place and recognition  in our multi cultural and secular society.

At times this jostling can turn into friction and I felt with greater awareness and understanding I could help improve the situation.

As such during the last 6 months I have developed and created a social enterprise project to support greater harmony and improve community relations amongst my students and students in Hungary.

This involved connecting directly with Hungarian schools and teachers and building closer links to promote greater understanding and awareness of cultural aspects on all sides:

Why Hungary & Budapest?

When Wolverhampton was but a simple town (it now has city status) it was twinned with Kőbánya a district in Budapest, this is rural and economically deprived area of Budapest and Hungary and through this link many families relocated to Wolverhampton with the freedom of movement that the EU offered.

Additional reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%91b%C3%A1nya

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_districts_in_Budapest

Many schools I have worked in have Hungarian families and students and I have seen how they have struggled with community tensions, as such at the beginning of the year I began first through social media and later directly through students families to connect with teachers, students and trade unions in Hungary to link and share resources.

This quickly developed into opportunities to explore student/staff exchange programmes that would offer if not the same but wider and specific local opportunities that similar student exchange programmes in France, Germany etc. offer.

As such I began fundraising to visit Budapest and volunteer in local Kőbánya schools that would welcome linking up with West Midlands schools and support local Hungarian students and that would welcome UK students to visit them on exchange programmes.

My Just Giving Page:

I set up a Just Giving page and was quickly overwhelmed by the generosity of family, friends, colleagues and local and national businesses that supported this social enterprise project. Along with the generous donations, Bucket rattling with my children, boot sales and many other activities soon allowed me to reach my goal of £500

Me and my children out fundraising.

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/pat-ryan-1

Major Sponsors

Jet2 Airlines kindly offered to donate flights to Budapest when I approached them and explained my projects aims and objectives, as such during August I met with Karl Sharpe at East Midlands airport to collect the flights they had  donated and formally arrange my visit.

https://www.jet2.com/flights/hungary

Tara Ethical Recruitment Teaching Agency also kindly donated to this project, Tara are a Teaching recruitment agency in my area and were happy to help as they work closely with the communities involved.

http://www.taraprofessionalrecruitment.co.uk/

The Major of Wolverhampton- I met with the Mayor & Mayoress of Wolverhampton to discuss this project and they kindly endorsed this social enterprise project and because of their support the project and planned trip was reported in local and regional newspapers:

such as:

Express & Star & Wolverhampton Chronicle:

The largest regional newspapers covered this project on the 30th August.

Wednesfield Magazine:

The social enterprise project was reported on in their October/November edition:(Page 23)

As such later this year I plan to travel to Hungary and visit schools and volunteer in various schools and meet with both local officials and trade unions to begin to create programmes where students and staff can communicate, share and support each other  and hopefully begin the process of greater and closer links, with the hope to foster greater harmony in both communities.

I hope you will revisit the blog to see how things are progressing and to support where you can.