Tribute to Sue Njie
Sue
Sue Njie
15th July 1951 – 15th July 2009
Bristol Refugee Rights and its Refugee Welcome Centre grew out of Sue Njie’s vision and determination.
It was Sue who, during the past ten years, saw the gap in provision for people newly arrived in Bristol, who seek asylum in UK, and set about organising for it to be filled.
She recognised the way isolation and exclusion affect asylum seekers in Britain. She understood the importance of a place where asylum seekers could come together, feel welcomed, and begin to find the support they so desperately needed. She knew, from many years community work experience, that to start things you have to take risks – have to be prepared to put yourself on the line. She took every opportunity that presented itself to speak about this need, to bring together a steering group, to attain wider recognition for the project, argue the case often in the face of scepticism and discouragement, to raise initial funds and to realise her dream. In April 2006 the doors opened, with a hot meal and a handful of volunteers.
Since then, the centre has grown enormously and gone through many changes – in name (from the imaginative but impossible to keep repeating Holding Refugees and Human Rights in Mind to the snappier Bristol Refugee Rights, in location (St Paul’s to Easton), in staff and volunteers, in users of the service, and in the Board of Trustees. It is now becoming recognised as a meeting point and real resource for new arrivals in Bristol. But it has remained firmly based in Sue’s initial vision – a place of welcome for asylum seekers and new refugees, where people from all over the world meet each other as human beings, and form a community that grows and works together.
Innovation of this kind requires more than dotting i’s and crossing t’s. It requires passionate commitment, insistence, clarity of purpose, and refusal to be diverted. Sue had all this. And as well she had a huge heart, and a capacity to meet and respond to everyone equally. Besides the strength to inspire and initiate, she noticed and responded to individual need. This is how she will be remembered by many dozens of people – for her generosity, wisdom born of experience, her straightforward kindness and her capacity to meet, appreciate and enjoy people on their own terms.
She leaves a profound sense of loss but also a powerful legacy – in the flourishing voluntary community groups she worked so hard to establish, and also in personal gratitude from an astonishing number of people in every walk of life in Bristol, including many users of the Refugee Welcome Centre.
BRR sends deep condolences to Josh and all Sue’s friends
