Our Aim

Building relationships for refugee children to give them the start they need in life.

Many child refugees and asylum-seeking children have lost their loved ones and put their dreams and aspirations on hold. We have developed a mentoring programme to build relationships between approved individuals and refugee children to give them the start they need in life to progress and excel. This will ensure these children and their families, have direct support and access to the local community.

Vision

Empower young refugees to become confident and self-sufficient individuals who have the ability to reach their full potential.

Mission

Support the biggest number of young refugees and help them settle, grow and achieve.

Values

Promote inclusion and believe in the power of youth.

How we started

The name ‘Arise’ derives from the reflection of the journey a refugee or asylum-seeking young person may take.

Many children go through a life-changing experience, often coming from war-torn countries to get to the UK. Our programme started in 2017 to support fostering agencies and local authorities, in London and Birmingham, with their unaccompanied asylum seekers (UASC) who are in foster care.

In 2018, we moved to Bradford to introduce School-Based Mentoring (SBM), where schools are involved in either referring or providing space for the mentoring activity to support refugees who are in schools. And since then we are expanding to more schools in the city. Arise Refugees is an associate product of My Foster Family, a social enterprise which improves foster care service across the UK.

Our Team

CEO

Shadim Hussain

Shadim is CEO of My Foster Family, a community interest company he founded in 2019 and successively launched My Adoption Family, a faith sensitive�...

Mentoring Programme Lead

Nouran Mohammed

I am the mentoring programme lead. I am responsible for building and developing the mentoring programme. I work closely with mentors and mentees to pr...

Head of Operations

Shaqib Juneja

I am Head of Operations at My Foster Family. I am responsible for engaging with our partners at an operational level, and ensuring our internal and ex...

What our People Say

"FZ has made a lot of good progress in terms of his communication and language skills, we were now able to conduct 90% of the session in English and FZ felt comfortable to chat with me throughout."

Azza Almossalmi
Mentor

"I learned how to be a good person, never give up."

A.A, 16
Afghanistan

"The people that came and talked to us taught me that life is hard and I need to try to be the best on the thing that I want to do. It was a good experience and time going away from home and spending some time with people like me who understand me more."

K.E, 16
Albania

"I learn many things, how to be confident in your school and also to be brave and anyone make fun of you, recognise him, go on your way what you want to do."

M.K, 14
Afghanistan

"I have been working with my mentor for more than 6 months now. We had an amazing time together, She is like best friends to me that listens and helps me. she has taught me things that I never knew before, things that will help me in the future. She has given me guidance, encouragement and she is absolutely the best and sweetest mentor ever."

B.H, 15
Syria