Teaching foraging can be a way to welcome people to local life. Tamara Colchester shares her experience of running foraging sessions for refugees and asylum seekers.  

This year I’ve focussed my foraging events on working with communities around Scotland and who don’t have easy access to time in green spaces. The range of needs and challenges are broad, and so far we’ve worked with people living with chronic illness, mental health challenges, blindness, deafblindness, trauma, and domestic abuse, as well as veterans, refugees and asylum seekers. These last two groups that have now become the main focus of our work with Plant Listening, a community interest company I formed two years ago. 

Working with all of these groups has brought out the central issue of access. It’s easy to assume that living in a beautiful rural environment ensures easy access to natural spaces. I’ve now learnt that this is far from the case, and that without an invitation, a guide, as well as transport, that spending any length of time in the natural world can be either financially, physically or psychologically difficult. This is particularly true for asylum seekers and refugees, people who are living in a new country, without a network of support, local knowledge, understanding of the language or the financial means to travel. 

There is a difference between the opportunities available to refugees and asylum seekers. Refugees have been given legal status, are able to have bank accounts, work, and are given a small amount of financial assistance. Asylum seekers on the other hand exist in a kind of limbo state in which they are unable to legally work, hold a bank account, or travel. Each asylum seekers is assigned to a hotel while their application is processed (this can take over a year) during which time they are given £9 a week to live on. They are threatened with deportation if they spend a night away from the hotel they have been assigned to. 

As we’ve recently seen, there is some resistance to the presence of asylum seekers, and so the places they are held can become like prisons. Even where this is not the case, with no financial means there is little possibility of travel by public transport, alongside a sense of unease about their new surroundings and whether they are welcome there. 

So far this year we’ve put on three pilot events for refugees and asylum seekers living in Dumfries and Glasgow. These have ranged from days at our base, a hill farm in Galloway, to local walks near their hotels, as well as an organised visit and foraging walk to Luss Estate on Loch Lomond. This diversity is helpful in mapping different options for what works and what doesn’t in offering support foraging experiences to these groups. With the generous funding from the AoF we were able to cover the food costs for three of these events, ensuring we were able to share a meal full of foraged ingredients in the peaceful surroundings of the woods. 

Some of the challenges so far encountered include language barriers, transport issues, lack of follow through despite people signing up, the weather (!) and lack of funding. But all of these have been far outweighed by the beautiful experiences each event has given rise to.

Many of the attendees have expressed a deep thanks for being helped to find their way to a space in which they can spend time outside, surrounded by trees, clean water, and plants. Sennan, a man from Yemen who lost his family in the conflict there and whose journey to the UK was a harrowing ordeal, summed this up as he stood by the river watching the water. ‘My heart’ he said, ‘I can feel my heart for the first time since having to leave my country.’ 

If you would be interested in being involved in any events like these, or advice about planning your own, then please contact Tamara