Refugees

This morning hundreds of life jackets washed up on the banks of the river Thames in London. We created this visual installation to highlight the plight of the thousands of refugees who have risked their lives trying to reach safety, and demand that our government does more to help ahead of the Refugees Welcome Here march this Saturday. Will you join us? 

There are more refugees in the world than there have ever been: 65.3 million people right now are on the move, having been forced to flee their homes. But no matter how shocking this number is, it's hard to identify with a statistic, let alone empathise with one. When thinking about the refugee crisis, and what our response should be to it, we need to make an imaginative leap and imagine what people - people just like us - are facing when they run for their lives. 

Last September, a photo of a small boy on a beach caused a shockwave of horror across Europe. With his blue shorts, red t-shirt and small shoes, Alan Kurdi looked like any one of the thousands of European children who had enjoyed a seaside holiday with their families that summer.  But the photo was wrong. Instead of playing in the sand, Alan was lying face down in it. He had drowned, alongside his brother Galib and mother Rehana, as they fled the war in Syria for a safer life in Europe. Despite the outrage, the headlines, the political promises that followed these photos, one year later children are still dying. Today, on World Humanitarian Day, make a pledge to join us on Saturday 17 September to march in solidarity with refugees and stop children dying on Europe's shores.

There are 836 million people living in extreme poverty, most of them in developing countries. The figures are staggering. But the power to change that lies in the hands of young people, and the young people who work with ActionAid provide a really inspiring example. International Youth Day falls every year on 12th August, and this year’s theme is “eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable consumption and production”. That’s why we’re taking this opportunity to celebrate just some of the amazing young people who work with ActionAid.

The incredible Olympic refugee team are making headlines across the world, but there's an equally inspiring refugee sports team that you might not have heard of: ActionAid's all-female refugee football team in Lebanon.17-year-old centre forward Hanin, blogs for us on why they formed the team, what it means to her and what the women have overcome to become ActionAid’s ‘Premier League’.

Over the past year, the escalating conflict in Syria and the European refugee crisis has brought the plight of refugees to the world’s attention. As thousands of refugees continue to flee war zones and persecution in search of safety in Europe, and the EU debates how to deal with the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, it's the voices of refugees themselves that have been absent. So for World Refugee Day we want their voices to be heard.