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Judy
is from Bradford Nightstop, a charity founded in 1993 in response
to the problem of youth homelessness in the city. She explains its
role today: "We provide emergency accommodation for young homeless
people while agencies find them more permanent accommodation. We
have a network of hosts and a network of telephone contact people
that work in their own homes making the link between the agencies
and the hosts that have the beds. I was a host for ten years.
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| Bubble-making
inside the Bradford Vision Village |
"We
want to raise awareness because we also have an educational policy
now. I did the initial research in Bradford to see if we needed
one for Nightstop. Homelessness is now part of the secondary school
curriculum. Some kids think leaving home is a big adventure so we
try and talk about it as a reality and about what is available.
We have tried to include people who have had these experiences but
they are a very transient population and so it hasn't always worked
but we did get them involved in a video we made."
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| Bradford
Nightstop helps young homeless people. |
Judy
says that the homelessness problem in Bradford is probably no worse
than in any other British city. However she believes "there's
a big hidden homelessness where people are sleeping on some other
person's settee, and when that friend gets fed up with them they
move somewhere else. It's like an iceberg. We only see the tip."
Helen
Brand is one of a small band of Mythbusters. They go into schools
to challenge misconceptions about different cultural and religious
backgrounds. Helen says the Mela has given her the opportunity to
network with other organisations. Such co-operation may help the
development of the programme.
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| Helen
Brand, "Mythbuster." |
If
you think of archives you probably think of dusty documents, brown
with age. This Is Our History, a new project launched by the West
Yorkshire Archive Service in Bradford, couldn't be more different.
Rehana Aziz explains: "This is a pilot project to get community
groups interested in their history and to record it digitally...At
the end of the project we are hoping to create a searchable CD-ROM
for each group, and hopefully we will be able to put it on the internet
where everyone will be able to learn about everybody else's history."
The
project has been successful beyond all expectation - the original
idea was to get four community groups to make CD-ROMs but currently
18 groups are involved in the project. People have got involved
for many different reasons: "The Estonian Club in Bradford
decided to take part because it was their fiftieth anniversary.
Another group we are working with is the Howard Street Mosques Daycare
Centre, a group of elders who just want to share their history and
let people know about their stories. Some groups hope this project
may be one way of bridging the inter-generational gap, working on
a project instead of just talking about inter-generational issues."
Rehana
adds: "One goal of the project was to get those hard to reach
groups who are not traditional archive users and get them involved
in recording their history. We're working with a group at the Milan
Centre and it's a lot of elderly Asian women, it's a social group
and they thought it would be a good opportunity to tell their story.
We have another group from Tong Street and they are crocheting a
map of Bradford. The main idea about this is to get people thinking
about archives in a way that is accessible to them."
Not
only does this very special village provide a lot of fun for all
the family but it also brings together people from across Bradford!
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Take
a look back at the 2004 Mela!
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MORE
PHOTOGALLERIES!
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If
it's happening, we'll be there...
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