Unheard voices: The refugees and asylum seekers forging new lives in the East

In a quiet corner of a medieval church in Norwich, a 15-year-old boy from Georgia is patiently helping his parents with their English.

His name is Nodari. He loves football, school and computer games. He tells me, with a glint of pride, how he picked up his language skills playing Fortnite.

Nodari doesn't know why his family left their home - but he knows they had to.

He is still haunted by their journey to get to the UK; one of almost 30,000 who have crossed the English Channel on a small boat so far this year.

"When you come on a boat, it's too hard," he says. "You can see nothing. You're just going. You can't go back. It's so scary."

The nave is full of dozens of refugees and asylum seekers with similar stories. People whose voices aren't often heard when political debates rage over immigration.

Two-year-old Nazanin sits grinning with a cup of milk. She won't remember the trauma of her family's journey here, or the months staying in a migrant hotel. Others will never forget it.

Mohammed wants to show me his TikTok account. He uses it to discuss his old home Sudan - which he fled due to the ongoing civil war - and his new home, Norwich.

"I miss my country. I miss my home. I pray for my home," he says. "But Norwich is cool, Norwich is quiet. The people here are so kind. I love Norwich."

This city has a long history of offering sanctuary.

When the charity New Routes was founded here 20 years ago, its aim was to help 30 asylum seekers integrate. Now it supports more than 1,500 people from 60 different countries.

The boss, Gee Cook, isn't the sort of chief executive who sits behind a desk. Today she's teaching a kitchen full of Eritrean, Ethiopian and Sudanese men to cook shepherd's pie.

A migrant herself, she is passionate about integration. She wants to counter with compassion the ugly image of the UK painted by this summer's anti-immigration riots.

"I phoned my own children and said don't go out," she says, recalling how she felt watching the online videos of rioters trying to torch hotels holding asylum seekers.

"Just keep your head down. Don't make eye contact with people. That was a place that I'd never really felt in this country - that people like me won't be safe.

"We're lucky here in the East that we didn't really see the huge far-right challenges that we saw in the summer.

"People are very tolerant here but I think we need to move beyond tolerance now to valuing people that come with new skills, new expertise and new cultures."

But the sad truth is that lots of people - here to try and pick up the basics for a new life in Britain - do not feel valued. They often feel alone, attacked and demonised.

Home Office figures show that, in the year ending March 2024, there were 140,561 hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales. Of those, 70% were racially motivated.

One mother - who fled war and left her family in Africa - tells me she was racially abused this summer, as she waited at a bus stop.

"I just wish people could change their perspective towards asylum seekers, refugees and maybe immigrants," she says.

"They believe most of them are illiterate, they don't have anything to offer. But rather not. We have a lot to offer.

"Don't kick against those you don't know. Maybe they are your brothers or sisters."

Some here want to return to their old careers. Most are desperate to learn, to help. To add to - not take from - a community they might one day call home.

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