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Radiant and Brighter – a place for people to come together and learn from each other.
Micheal and Pheona Matovu
This podcast features Radiant and Brighter. Radiant and Brighter is an organisation set up by Pheona and Micheal Matovu. They were not refugees or asylum seekers and therefore, did not qualify for any support. They experienced destitution and though their experiences developed Radiant and Brighter which is a Community Interest Company. That aims to bridge the gap between the needs of the growing BAME, refugee and migrant communities.
It has been a few months since I met them wearing my brightest shirt. And I did promise a picture.
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Transcript
K: I’m here with Micheal and Pheona Matovu from radiant and brighter. Hello, good morning!
M: Good morning, how are we today?
K: I’m good, how are we?
M: We are radiant and brighter.
P: I see you’re wearing a radiant and brighter shirt, what can we say?
K: I’m wearing my radiant and brightest clothes today – we’ll need to get a photograph of that! Micheal and Pheona, thanks so much for inviting me along to talk about what you do at Radiant and Brighter. When did it start and why did it start?
P: Thank you for coming to speak with us. Radiant and Brighter really started in 2012, but it was incorporated as a community interest company in 2014. We started because we had been through an experience where we couldn’t work due to immigration controls. Those five years were a challenge – very difficult, very challenging circumstances. But those five years allowed us to think about what we were going through, and what others might be going through.
Prior to that, I had been in the UK for ten years. Micheal had been in the UK for over five years. Everything was fine, we thought we were doing well. Our credit was good. We bought a house. It was all good until we got refused residence in the UK in 2007. We were refused a number of times. Then we appealed. We went through a number of processes then eventually started a fresh application. They didn’t say “you can now stay in the country” for a good part of five years until 2012.
That was difficult because obviously we were not allowed to work. We were not allowed to claim benefits. We were not allowed to do anything that would remotely allow us to have a life where we could have food and a roof over our heads. So family and friends had to step in.
Now Micheal will tell you about the volunteering that we did, but the challenge at that time was so great. We didn’t know that it was even going to be greater when we got permanent residence in 2012. Click To Tweet
And we thought ‘yay! We can now work and it’s going to be brilliant!’ You know, poverty is behind us and it’s all going to be fine. And no, it didn’t work like that. Because when we started to look for work, we were not finding work. We were being told that “You don’t have experience”. We were being put back because some of the employers would not accept our experience from previous work. Or indeed the volunteering that we had done.
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By Refugee Voices ScotlandMicheal and Pheona Matovu
This podcast features Radiant and Brighter. Radiant and Brighter is an organisation set up by Pheona and Micheal Matovu. They were not refugees or asylum seekers and therefore, did not qualify for any support. They experienced destitution and though their experiences developed Radiant and Brighter which is a Community Interest Company. That aims to bridge the gap between the needs of the growing BAME, refugee and migrant communities.
It has been a few months since I met them wearing my brightest shirt. And I did promise a picture.
-0-
Transcript
K: I’m here with Micheal and Pheona Matovu from radiant and brighter. Hello, good morning!
M: Good morning, how are we today?
K: I’m good, how are we?
M: We are radiant and brighter.
P: I see you’re wearing a radiant and brighter shirt, what can we say?
K: I’m wearing my radiant and brightest clothes today – we’ll need to get a photograph of that! Micheal and Pheona, thanks so much for inviting me along to talk about what you do at Radiant and Brighter. When did it start and why did it start?
P: Thank you for coming to speak with us. Radiant and Brighter really started in 2012, but it was incorporated as a community interest company in 2014. We started because we had been through an experience where we couldn’t work due to immigration controls. Those five years were a challenge – very difficult, very challenging circumstances. But those five years allowed us to think about what we were going through, and what others might be going through.
Prior to that, I had been in the UK for ten years. Micheal had been in the UK for over five years. Everything was fine, we thought we were doing well. Our credit was good. We bought a house. It was all good until we got refused residence in the UK in 2007. We were refused a number of times. Then we appealed. We went through a number of processes then eventually started a fresh application. They didn’t say “you can now stay in the country” for a good part of five years until 2012.
That was difficult because obviously we were not allowed to work. We were not allowed to claim benefits. We were not allowed to do anything that would remotely allow us to have a life where we could have food and a roof over our heads. So family and friends had to step in.
Now Micheal will tell you about the volunteering that we did, but the challenge at that time was so great. We didn’t know that it was even going to be greater when we got permanent residence in 2012. Click To Tweet
And we thought ‘yay! We can now work and it’s going to be brilliant!’ You know, poverty is behind us and it’s all going to be fine. And no, it didn’t work like that. Because when we started to look for work, we were not finding work. We were being told that “You don’t have experience”. We were being put back because some of the employers would not accept our experience from previous work. Or indeed the volunteering that we had done.