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A Great Success for our First Away-Day

Welcome!We organised our first ‘away-day’ for some of the asylum-seekers/refugees from Swansea on Sunday 13th December at Hay Castle.

Over 20 asylum seekers and refugees attended the day, including a mother and her 3 children (8 years, 6 years and 2 months of age). Our guests came from around the world, including Eritrea, Sudan, Iraq, Libya , Senegal, and were accompanied by some wonderful volunteers from Swansea – Maria, Adele, Lil, Irvine and Wayne.

Making bread rollsThe day was full of activities, which included the making of bread rolls and mince pies, the drinking of lots of chai and tea, the eating (and making) of lamb and vegetarian tagines with rice made by Irvine (rice with added peas, onions, tomato and mushrooms – delicious!) as well as rice cakes and a salad with roasted pineapple. The culinary feast was complemented with Christmas puddings that had been kindly donated. In addition to the enjoyment of gourmet delights, our guests also enjoyed making clay pots as well as a tour of Hay-on-Wye and some relaxing moments by the fire.

Hay CastleAt the end of the day, a storyteller arrived (organised by our volunteer Lou), and he brought a small band, who played a few songs accompanied by everyone dancing (including our Assembly Members William Powell and Kirsty Williams!).

The Hay Castle Trust have been incredibly generous in letting us have the use of their beautiful building as well as offering space for sorting and packing for collections. Our visitors visited the store and were able to take items that were useful for them. At the end, we also made up some wash bags with toiletries wells as a notebook and pens and pencils.

We have had some lovely tweets that we would like to share:

We would just like to say a big thank you to everyone that made the day possible, including Hay Castle, Talgarth Mill Craft Shop, as well as the numerous volunteers who came from near and far!

We look forward to arranging more respite days in the New Year!