Gardening for growth - supporting migrants, refugees and asylum seekers

Over the summer months our Community Engagement Facilitator Mus (pictured below left) worked with Waterloo Community Counselling to establish and grow a Gardening Club for members of their Multi Ethnic Counselling Service. A service offering free mother-tongue counselling to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in over 30 languages.

Recent events have really highlighted why this service, and others like it, are so very vital. There is a deep need for compassion and support for those who have sought refuge from persecution or war, experienced the trauma of migration, and the challenge of establishing a new life in a new culture.

The Gardening Club was created to help individuals build gardening skills and confidence with the aim of moving them into our volunteering groups in the future, a contemporary approach to outreach and engagement. Volunteering can be a great step into a career in horticulture, so we hope to grow new gardeners while boosting the health and wellbeing of people who have faced such challenges in the past.

With our support, enthusiastic group have created a vegetable and flower growing garden in Waterloo, transforming an otherwise blank space into a productive garden for people, and wildlife too. Dahlias, sweetpeas, lavender and abelia are pleasing visiting pollinators!

We continue our work to diversify our programmes with thanks to the support of the City Bridge Foundation & the National Lottery Community Fund - thank you players!

For more about Waterloo Community Counselling, visit https://waterloocc.co.uk