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Joanne Ng and Jayden Joo put the finishing touches to the new Unity in Diversity website and Facebook page Charities always start with good intentions, but good intentions don’t always yield positive outcomes. It’s refreshing and uplifting to work with an organisation whose good intentions are backed up by decision-making and commitment that improves lives in precisely the ways they’ve always intended. Founded in 1984 by Keith Bailey, the Austin Bailey Foundation has an impre

This Friday, May 15th, marks the anniversary of the founding of the city of Las Vegas and the opening of the first-ever McDonald’s restaurant. If those events, in 1905 and 1940, saw the birth of something unmistakably American, there’s another anniversary on the same day that belongs to the entire world. In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution marking the 15th of May as a date to be celebrated each year as the International Day of Families. It’s a ce

The weather in South Wales doesn’t always help us with outdoor activities, but gardening is relaxing, productive and environmentally friendly, and it’s helped many new arrivals in Swansea to put down roots in more ways than one. Unity in Diversity trustee Hazle Boyles has led a series of gardening projects in the 2020s. Hazle helps UiD service users choose plants that she knows will survive and thrive in the local climate. The outcome has been season after season of beautifu

Talented people deserve an outlet for their skills, and UiD service users are very talented indeed. The people who walk through our door and ask for support in building a new life in Wales are eager to make a contribution. They’re eager to work. In 2022, Swansea University lecturer and Unity in Diversity Trustee Jill Boggs set up an employability workshop designed to help them work towards that goal. Jill applied successfully for funding and structured a workshop that achiev

How do you feel about the rise of artificial intelligence? Did you ever anticipate a world in which all knowledge would be available to you at the click of a button, but that you would be flooded with information twenty four hours a day and often not be able to tell fact from fiction? Ready or not, that’s the world we live in. So we should at least prepare ourselves for it. And at Unity in Diversity, we believed in preparing our service users for it, too. With the help of o

As we move from Winter to Spring, we remember that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked forced relocations on a scale unseen in Europe since World War Two. Within weeks, over five million refugees had left the country. A small fraction of them came to Britain, with approximately 7,500 eventually finding their way to Wales. In March 2022 the Welsh Government responded by creating the Welcome Ticket, offering free travel on public transport, initially to Ukrain

Periods of lockdown in 2020 and 2021 were hard on all of us, and not only because of the danger presented by COVID. We couldn’t go to work. We couldn’t visit friends and family. Many of us felt like prisoners in our own homes. However difficult it was for adults, though, the situation children found themselves in was particularly cruel. Many young children who found themselves confined and separated from their friends felt as if they were being punished. Unable to understand

Kite flying originated in China around 1,500 years ago. Kites made from silk and bamboo became popular for a variety of reasons. As early as the 6th century AD, they were used to measure distances, gauge wind speed and direction, and send signals and orders in battle. At Unity in Diversity we prefer to keep things peaceful, but the traditions of our service users and volunteers from around the world fascinate us. When a group of Afghani friends shared their passion for kite

In 2022, UiD hosted a fashion show featuring traditional clothing from different countries, creating a space to celebrate cultural heritage and share the diverse backgrounds of each individual, while strengthening unity through connection. Below, Gemma who captured the audience’s attention in a beautiful hanbok, the traditional dress of her home country Korea, shares her personal experience of the UiD fashion show. One step forward, carrying a quiet tremble. Another step, let

Unity in Diversity volunteers are our face and voice in the community. They champion our values. They encourage others to walk by our side and make Swansea’s asylum seekers and refugees feel welcome and valued in their new home. This Spring, we’re asking a team of UiD volunteers to go a step further. We’re asking them to be our Community Ambassadors. This is an exciting time for UiD. We’re launching a series of new projects, telling the world about them via our new website an

Learning a second language presents a challenge for anyone. That challenge is even greater for learners whose native alphabets bear no resemblance to the Roman alphabet. The Roman alphabet is the foundation of English, Welsh, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. But not Mandarin, Korean, Japanese or Arabic. Arabic speakers learning English must navigate not only a new alphabet but a writing system that needs to be read from right to left. Asylum seekers and refugees who make

It’s fair to say that when we buy a packet of crisps, we’re more interested in the crisps than the packet. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the packaging altogether. Did you know that crisp packets contain a thin layer of aluminium? Jennie Santa Cruz does, and that knowledge has given her the idea for a community project which promises to address two issues that the people of Swansea care about very much. We’ll let Jennie tell you more: “When you scrunch up an empty cr

We think Swansea is a place of unique beauty and appeal. In 1956, Gower was designated the UK's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The first and still the best. Each year, just over four and a half million people visit the Swansea area, spending between £600 and £700 million. That’s a lot of money, obviously, but we don’t think it’s enough. Swansea attracts fewer tourists and less tourism revenue than Windsor Park, which offers beautiful trees and grounds but is 80 mil

Over the past decade a Hungarian man, now in his early forties, has attracted attention for converting to Judaism, beginning to eat Kosher food and observing the Sabbath. He’s also been circumcised. There’s nothing unusual about this until we consider what he was doing in the decade before. Csanad Szegedi joined Hungary’s far-right Jobbik Party as a teenager, became its Vice President at twenty-three and in 2009 became its loudest voice in the European Parliament when aged ju

We all experience fear. Sometimes it’s a gut response to a close-up threat. The barking dog around the corner that we hear but can’t see in the darkness. The car that swerves into our path at the last moment. Sometimes it’s an irrational response to something that isn’t a threat at all. Are Muslims taking over Britain? Do they want to? If you believe everything you read online, you might wonder. You might be persuaded to feel afraid. That fear might feel real. Let’s take a mo