Anne Yarwood

Mosques and temples are helping to assist the elderly and the vulnerable in their towns and cities.

As the countrywide lockdown takes hold within the first week many religious and community organisations have been helping ALL members of their community. 

The army of volunteers have been collecting food and essentials to ensure those people that need the most help at this time of crisis are being cared for. 

At many times they are putting themselves in harm’s way.

The Bolton Hindu Forum said they are leading ‘a joint Coordinated Community Help Program to look after elders living alone and who have no immediate family and those who have family but they are out of town and not able to help as they would in normal circumstances’.

The Masjide Noorul Islam (Blackburn) have already recruited 250 people to help the elderly and vulnerable in isolation.

Kamal Hussein’s story is in Kutupalong, world’s largest refugee settlement –  late August 2017, thousands of refugees arriving daily. Many children were separated from parents and Hussein’s mission was to reunite families.

Hussein decided to act after a woman asked for help finding her child.

“I rented a microphone” relaying a description. His broadcasts worked – someone returned the child; his mission was born.

Charities gave audio equipment and a booth to broadcast the names of separated children and urge parents to collect them.

 “The new refugees don’t know the camp, they get lost here,”

Myanmar’s campaign of persecution and violence drove 740,000+ stateless Rohingya from their Rakhine homes. Now, 1,000,000+ Rohingya are in Bangladesh.

A refugee himself, he was separated from his parents when a boy.

“As a child, I had a lot of pain in my life but doing this work, I feel at peace with myself.”

www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2019/11/5dc3fd334/rohingya-mans-mission-reunite-parents-lost-children-new-film.html

• Forestry Commission Report 2018- 2019. Progress made towards target 11 million newly planted trees in England 2017- 22, including The Northern Forest.
• Government objective: increase area of woodland to 12% in England , by 2060
• Woodland Trust Young Peoples’ BIG CLIMATE FIGHTBACK, planted 10,000 trees in Derbyshire 2019
• Woodland Trust since founded 1972:- planted 13 million trees, 1089 mill trees saved, 3k rescued.
• READ HERE – www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/people-behind-our-work-cumbria/
• Multitude of small- scale planting projects by local groups eg Trees for Cities, Brighton  – bhgreenspaceforum.org.uk

Photo – A younger Manu Berardi demonstrating against local tree destruction by Developers

• first know thyself
• listen
• practice foregiveness
• laugh

• Two in five trans people (41 per cent) and three in ten non-binary people (31 per cent) have experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months.
• More than a quarter of trans people (28 per cent) in a relationship in the last year have faced domestic abuse from a partner.
• One in four trans people (25 per cent) have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives.
• One in eight trans employees (12 per cent) have been physically attacked by colleagues or customers in the last year.
• More than a third of trans university students (36 per cent) in higher education have experienced negative comments or behaviour from staff in the last year
• Two in five trans people (40 per cent) adjust the way they dress because they fear discrimination or harassment. This number increases significantly to half of non-binary people (52 per cent).
• Two in five trans people (41 per cent) said that healthcare staff lacked understanding of specific trans health needs when accessing general healthcare services in the last year.
• Three in five trans people (62 per cent) who have undergone, or are currently undergoing, medical intervention for their transition are unsatisfied with the time it took to get an appointment.
• More than one in ten trans people (11 per cent) have gone abroad for medical treatment to alter their physical appearance, including buying hormones over the internet from other countries, with many citing the barriers they currently face in accessing medical treatment in the UK.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/lgbt_in_britain_-_trans_report_final.pdf