Guildford College LRC
Bali Rai visits to celebrate Diversity Week!
During Diversity Week Author Bali Rai spoke to three groups of 40-50 students from different courses such as Electrical installation, Business, Performing Arts and Beauty Therapies about a wide range of equality and diversity issues. He covered topics including reading, race, equality, the rich-poor divide, the London riots, EMAs and also music. He made the students think and join in by asking questions and promoting discussions.
Bali also spoke about the controversial topic of honour killing which is the subject of his latest novel Killing Honour. It is reported that 17,000 women every year are the victims of honour related violence.
Feedback from the event was very positive and one student tweeted “@balirai you gave an amazing talk at Guildford the other day! enjoyed it alot, thankyou for coming :)” and his books have been going out of the LRC like hot cakes!
Born in Leicester in 1971, Bali grew up in a multicultural, multi-racial community close to the city centre. Since then he has written eight young adult novels and his first, (Un)arranged Marriage, created a huge amount of interest and won many awayres including the Angus Book Award and the Leicester Book of the Year.
If you are interested in reading one of his books you can borrow the following from the LRCs:
· Killing Honour
· (Un)arranged Marriage
· The Gun
· The Last Taboo
Why I Love My Country
When we put out a request for students and staff to tell us what they loved about their country of origin we didn’t expect such a fantastic result. We had 57 contributions describing 25 countries, from 5 continents. A Zimbabwean student wrote about traditional weddings and local music, a Scottish student about partying, many Nepalese described the wonderful mountain scenery and at least a dozen countries had the friendliest people in the world! For GCSE English students this tied in well with their autobiographical writing and ESOL students practiced their English. Books and flags, a bungee jumping sheep, a kiwi and traditional Nepalese accessories complemented the display.
Students and staff enjoyed trying to work out who had written the pieces and seeing where the countries were on the large map. All through Equality and Diversity Week (and beyond – the display was too good to take down after only 5 days) groups of students could be seen reading the latest offerings. Personally I found it very enriching to learn about the heritage of our College community and to understand more about the adjustments that many students have had to make when settling in to an English way of life.
Merrist Wood LRC
As part of Merrist Wood LRC’s contribution to Equality and Diversity Week in November 2011, we organised a guest speaker, Captain Chinbahadur Thapa, for about 80 Public Services students. Captain Chin is a serving Gurkha and currently holds the prestigious appointment of Queen’s Gurkha Orderly Officer. During his service he has served in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Falklands and Bosnia. Gurkhas have been a part of the British army for nearly 200 years and they are Nepalese.
Captain Chin regaled the students with tales of his service, a history of the Gurkhas and the origins of the Brigade, the diversity of roles they fulfil, finishing with a fantastic Q and A session. Tutor Tracy Lenton was very complimentary about the talk and would like to repeat the session next year. Hopefully this is the start of a long standing contact.
As a thankyou, the LRC gave a donation to the Gurkha Welfare Trust. Their thankyou letter was also very complimentary.
“It was extremely kind of you not only to have thought of the Trust....but also to raise the level of awareness of the Trust and our activities amongst the wider students and staff”
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