Cashel Forest - Scottish Refugee and Asylum Seeker Environmental Conservation Programme
Black Environment Network: www.ben-network.org.uk
In the first activity of its kind, Refugees and Asylum seekers from disadvantaged areas of Glasgow have been actively engaged in improving the Scottish landscape by planting trees - a universal symbol of hope - on a mountain overlooking Loch Lomond. Cashel Forest is one of many Millennium Forest for Scotland projects, with the ambitious collective aim to restore something of the unique ecology of the Caledonian Forest. It is also the setting for an exciting partnership project, involving BEN, BTCV and the Scottish Refugee Council, which aims to give excluded people a chance to use their skills, as volunteers, to contribute to the conservation and sustainable development of the environment in Scotland, and thereby to aid social integration. This approach benefits not only the volunteers themselves, but also the people in local communities with whom they come into contact.
Together, BEN, the Scottish Refugee Council and BTCV created the Scottish Refugee and Asylum Seeker Environmental Conservation Programme to address the need of refugees and asylum seekers for opportunities for social integration and the chance to make a meaningful contribution to Scottish natural heritage. They developed a programme of taster activities, which encompassed both urban and rural conservation volunteering opportunities. BEN co-ordinated the project, the Refugee Council recruited the volunteers and BTCV, building on their existing volunteering programme for the mainstream community, provided the on-site supervision. The approach involved a series of monthly outings to Cashel Forest and a successful tree-planting initiative which has led to a new forested area on the site in excess of 200 trees at the last count.
All in all, the project has seen quite a high throughput of volunteers. Participants have included refugees and asylum seekers from Colombia, Sudan, Albania, Kosovo, Asia and the Middle East. Many dedicated their tree to people or places they had lost or had to leave behind, but many more made forward-looking dedications to their new found country or the global environment.
The Black Environment Network (BEN) works across diverse sectors to integrate social, cultural and environmental concerns in the context of sustainable development. As an organisation, BEN's vision is to have representation and participation, at all levels, in the built and natural environment, which reflects the profile of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) population in the UK.