Last year’s winners of the Community Integration Awards talk about ping pong, integration and Brexit in The Huffington Post’s Beyond Brexit series.
The Brighton Table Tennis Club is an outward facing and open project that works with everyone but reaches out to the most deprived and vulnerable, with a strong commitment to promoting diversity. Originally serving kids from white British working-class communities, the Club has since 2014 – working with social services and schools – drawn in young people from the city’s fast-growing population of refugees and migrants, so they now comprise around 40% of its membership.
Besides being a safe space to play, compete and socialise with ‘host’ community users, these refugee and migrant young people find in the Club a chance to achieve sporting recognition and share responsibility for running it. Positive experiences of diverse Club life mean British-born members can become ambassadors for tolerance and diversity in their communities.
Meet The UK’s First Table Tennis Club Of Sanctuary That’s Giving A Masterclass In Integration on The Huffington Post, and read more about Brighton Table Tennis Club on the Community Integration Awards homepage.
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Also in the same series, MigrationWork’s Rachel Marangozov outlines what politicians need to do to help migrants integrate into British life.
