Peer support project gives voice to young people with irregular immigration status

Provider Just for Kids Law

Name Let Us Learn

When the Windrush scandal broke this year, one group of young people were left unsurprised by the revelations. The young leaders behind Let Us Learn have been raising awareness of the impact of hostile immigration policies on children and young people for years already.

The group formed in 2014 at the charity Just for Kids Law, after a change to the student finance rules meant many young people who were not British but who had grown up in the UK could no longer access funding for university.

They described themselves as "young, gifted and blocked" and helped change the law so that more young people like them could take up their places at university.

Four years later, the group is a fully established project working with hundreds of young people in London and across the UK. They have a long-term plan to become a stand-alone organisation - the first young migrant-led charity in the UK.

The project is led by three former participants, including Chrisann Jarrett, who founded Let Us Learn when she was just 18. She is just one of the estimated 120,000 young people living in the UK with "irregular" immigration status. She contacted Just for Kids Law for help with her own situation, before realising there were more young people like her who needed this help.

Everyone involved in Let Us Learn, from participants to volunteers to paid staff, is aged between 16 and 24, and has lived experience of migration and of living with "irregular status". Activities are planned and delivered by a committed group of young volunteers, known as the "core campaign team". Let Us Learn gatherings are group events, attended by 30 young people at a time, with games and activities designed by and for young people.

At every gathering, a young person shares their "story of self". These can cover traumatic events such as family separation and deportation, compulsory monthly visits to the Home Office where detention is a real possibility and intersectional issues such as being LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) and a first generation immigrant.

Although difficult subjects, the gatherings are joyous occasions and the stories are the highlight. Young people who have been so disempowered start to feel powerful again.

Let Us Learn is no longer focused solely on the intersection of education and immigration. The leaders now have their sights set on the hostile environment that has made their lives difficult.

In March, the group held a parliamentary event with the help of David Lammy MP to raise their concerns about the spiralling cost of immigration fees. And in April, young people demonstrated outside Downing Street when the Home Office again increased these immigration fees to an astronomical £1,533.

They are determined not to be the next Windrush scandal and to ensure they themselves are at the forefront of finding a solution.

• By Joel Carter, programmes director, Just for Kids Law
  
  

Participation in Action - My View

By Mariam Ajibola, 21

I heard about Let Us Learn when I was finishing my A-levels and found out I wasn't allowed to get a student loan. When I first attended a gathering, I met so many young people who were in the same situation as me. They understood what I was going through.

I knew I had to come back and pretty quickly I joined the core campaign team. We decide what the campaign will do next. I am now also the leader of the outreach and gathering team. Every month, we plan and deliver events for young people like ourselves. We have to make sure young people who are coming for the first time get the same experience I got when I first joined. This is a safe haven for them.

Our biggest achievement is probably our scholarships campaign. Lots of universities created scholarships and many of our friends were able to go to university as a result.

I delivered mince pies to the vice-chancellor of Brunel University to try to get a meeting. It didn't work, but others listened to us. If I'd never been in this situation, I would never have met this amazing group of young people.