The trip to Lunar House

(By Ning Liu)

On 24 Oct, students from Elatt went to Lunar House to welcome the refugee children.

These children were from the Calais ‘jungle’, they were trapped in this ‘jungle’ for years. Nearly all of them fled from their home counties which are suffering from wars. Since they arrived at Calais, some of them stayed there, but the environment for children was terrible.

There was no education, no internet, nothing interesting for them to do or to learn. The squalid, overcrowded refugee camps were really bad for the children. In addition to these, the most critical problems were that there were no adults to look after them and there were no families for them to stay with.

In Sept, the French president François Hollande had vowed to shut down the “Jungle” migrant camp. That means around 9,000 people will be moved from Calais to 140 centres across France in short-term. As this decision been announced, the problem of refugee children got much more serious. Without help they would be in danger.

According to it’s refugee policy, the UK government decided to transfer some children over who are under 18 years old and have UK-based relatives.

In the morning, the Elatt students got on the overground train to Croydon station. When they arrived at Lunar House, the students held up the banner and chanted “Refugees are welcome here”. The students were full of sympathy and kindness. Some of the students had tears in their eyes after the manager told them what the children have had been through and how scared they were.

Elatt students chanted in front of Lunar House

The next day at the Esol level one class, all the students had a very sober discussion with the teacher Yvonne, the whole class were very proud and pleased to they did went to welcome refugee children, and they will support them in many other ways.

A day later, this class met the Hackney Mayor. After some presentations, they gave him the picture from Lunar house as a gift, the expression was to show to the Mayor they do support refugees and want to involve.

Elatt students met Hackney Mayor in the class room