Through Advent, we're posting short interviews each weekend with asylum-seekers who've been forced into destitution, and remembering that Jesus was born to a refugee couple.
The final interview is with Katherine (23) from Burundi and her six-month-old son Brian.
Katherine talks about the uncertainty she lives with every day, the difficulty of living on vouchers instead of money, and the sense of exclusion and powerlessness:
“It is very, very difficult life to be a...
Through Advent, we're posting short interviews each weekend with asylum-seekers who've been forced into destitution, and remembering that Jesus was born to a refugee couple.
The final interview is with Katherine (23) from Burundi and her six-month-old son Brian.
Katherine talks about the uncertainty she lives with every day, the difficulty of living on vouchers instead of money, and the sense of exclusion and powerlessness:
“It is very, very difficult life to be asylum-seeker… You go in the street and see everybody who is living a normal life. I look at myself, I feel like I’m not human like them. Because I don’t have right to work, I don’t have right to do normal things like a normal person.”
Church Action on Poverty’s Living Ghosts campaign, part of the Still Human Still Here coalition, is calling for an end to policies which force asylum-seekers into destitution.
The interview was carried out by Hazel Healy in Northwest England during summer 2007. Some names have been changed to protect identities.
Listening to podcasts
- If you use Apple's iTunes program, you can download episodes of the Poverty Podcast, and subscribe so that future episodes are downloaded automatically, through the iTunes Store.
- Or you can just download or play the episode directly on this page. It's an MP3 file, which should play without difficulty on most computers.
Using podcasts
- The podcast is an excellent resource to use in churches and campaigning groups. Listening to these stories can give a real sense of the difficulties and problems faced by people living with poverty, and highlight the issues CAP is trying to address in its campaigns.
- Feel free to use the podcasts as part of presentations on poverty issues, in church services or group meetings.
- If you - or your church or organisation - have a blog or website, you can include the Advent asylum podcast RSS feed. This will display the podcast, and update when new episodes are added. (Your web host or blog provider should be able to tell you more about using RSS feeds.)
- Please acknowledge that the podcast has been produced by Church Action on Poverty. The interview in this episode was carried out by Hazel Healy.
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