Campaigns Volunteer of the Year Award 2008

Interview with Yeukai Taruvinga

By Jonathan Dearth, Director of The Right Ethos

Yeukai received her award of £250 just before Christmas, but it was only in February, that we finally got to meet and present her with a certificate. 

She is studying for a degree in International Development and came as my guest to the launch of the Make Poverty History book at City University in London.

Yeukai went to school in Zimbabwe, around the time that co-incidentally I visited a village about 15 miles away in 1993.

She came to the UK in 2002 to seek asylum from the Mugabe regime. As a student she attending opposition meeting & rallies and would get physically assaulted up by Mugabe’s supporters. When they started writing threats on the walls of her family’s house, she decided with her mother that she had to leave Zimbabwe at the age of 18.

In the UK, she has been imprisoned for around 10 weeks just for claiming asylum. In an article in The Guardian last December, she wrote:

“I am still not safe. I have not been given refugee status. After my release from detention I was not allowed benefits nor allowed to work. This is the government's policy of destitution; if you have failed in your asylum claim, then you are forced to live without support. I rely on handouts and gifts from churches and friends, even for the bed I sleep in and the soap I wash with. Most of the people who help me are asylum seekers or refugees themselves, because they understand what it's like.”

When we decided to give a cash award to the Volunteer of the Year, we imagined that it would go to someone who perhaps needed some money to help pay off their student loan or help a little towards their rent. We didn’t consider that it would be a contribution to helping someone who was forced to live in destitution due to the government’s current policy on those seeking asylum in the UK.

Meeting Yeukai this week was inspiring. She is an intelligent an energetic woman. She won this award because she devotes three days a week since 2005 to campaigning with The Refugee Council. The article below from the nominator for the award goes into more detail about why she deserved it.

Although knowledgeable with direct experience on the Zimbabwe situation, she works on campaigns that affect refugees and asylum seekers from all over the world including other parts of Africa such as Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

When she’s not at the Refugee Council, she’s campaigning with organisations such as Free Zim Youth on the democracy issues affecting her country which she is committed to returning to one day and wishes to help rebuild her community and her country. She wants to play a part in empowering people – today in the UK either asylum seekers through her campaigning work at the Refugee Council or her campaigning on the Zimbabwe situation.

Then hopefully, one day soon, empowering people in Zimbabwe to rebuild their society.

The winner is Yeukai Taruvinga of the Refugee Council. 

I should say that the chair of the panel, Jonathan Ellis works for the Refugee Council and therefore stood down from the panel before the shortlisting was done. Therefore, Chris Stalker of Campaign4Impact and Gill Kirk of Lyric Communications chose the winner. 

Chris Stalker said of Yeukai: 

“A compelling and inspiring example of vigorously campaigning for the rights of refugees, despite significantly difficult personal circumstances. Yeukai's commitment and effectiveness means she is a worthy winner of this year’s award.”

Gill Kirk commented: 

“An outstanding individual, by the sounds of it – as well as an excellent campaigner & sounds like a real pleasure to work with as well” 

Chris and Gill selected Todd Higgs as runner-up. Todd is a volunteer Media Assistant for the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). 

Yeukai has received the award of £250.

Yeukai was nominated by Bob Deffee, Head of Campaigns and Public Affairs at Refugee Council. 

Here is Bob’s nomination: 

“Yeukai is one of the key people helping her community - and the Refugee Council – by engaging as an activist to work on behalf of Zimbabweans who have sought sanctuary in the UK. A longstanding opponent of the Mugabe regime, her claim for asylum, like so many others, has been turned down by the UK government and she has lived in the UK without permission to work, or proper government support, since 2002. 

In that time she has been tireless in working with Zimbabwe community organisations including the Zimbabwe Women’s Network and the Zimbabwean Association to combat the arbitrary detention and deliberate use of destitution used by the Home Office to attempt to force these people to return – though the government accepts they can’t be sent home due to the danger in Zimbabwe.

Despite living this life of limbo, forced to exist only with the support of friends, Yeukai has redoubled her efforts to work to the benefit of the community and in the last year in particular has made an outstanding difference which we expect to bear fruit in the future. 

The Refugee Council has asked Yeukai to speak about her experiences at a number of high level meetings involving senior politicians, including at the party conferences and at the House of Commons, in support of our Just Fair campaign against destitution caused by the asylum process. This is crucial to the success of these meetings as personal testimony, given expertly by a refugee, is extremely powerful - though understandably painful to deliver. She has also been quoted in the national media to support our campaign. 

This year Yeukai has joined our policy team working with the Refugee Council research team to gather information from the Zimbabwean community about the effects of the policy of giving vouchers to people seeking asylum; she recorded and transcribed interviews, wrote the history of a previous campaign and contributed significantly to the final published report “More Token Gestures”.

Following on from this, she is now volunteering with the Asylum Support Partnership team (representing the Refugee Council and other agencies who provide support) to gather information on destitution which is presented to the UK Borders Agency. 

Yeukai’s qualities of calm and resolution, and her good humour linked to her propensity for work and her talents, are a lesson for all of us engaged in campaigning and we hope that her personal circumstances will allow her to continue to contribute to our campaigning through 2009, especially as we are engaged especially in a joint campaign with the TUC to allow people seeking asylum to work. Yeukai is a prime example of the waste of talent in the Zimbabweans community which could be benefitting the UK economy right now – and helping their own skills for when they eventually can return.”