Cyrenians Cymru

The Cyrenians continues to strengthen its links with minority groups across southwest Wales. Members of the Kurdish, Eritrean and Sudanese communities regularly meet at our Community centre.

Once a year, we hold an International Day at the centre, as a celebration of cultural traditions and friendship. In response to demand, we have also established weekly ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes.

The Cyrenians Cymru Unity in Diversity Group for local refugees and asylum seekers provide food, friendship and English language classes twice weekly, every week with occasional special events such as Naw Ruz.

John Butler, our Community Liaison Worker keeps the atmosphere warm and welcoming and we all enjoy cooking together and sitting down to eat together.

Our English class tutor Wayne Yare focuses classes on topics that are useful and relevant to everyday life in Swansea, such as the session titled ‘Talk Tidy Now’ that explained some Swansea colloquialisms that could confuse and exclude those who speak English as a second language.

Facilities for laundry and personal hygiene can be made available to those who need them. We link in with Swansea Bay Asylum Seekers Support Group, Swansea City of Sanctuary and SHARE Tawe.

Our most grateful thanks to the Big Lottery Awards for All programme for their grant to support the English classes, and to Swansea Compact Small Grants Fund and the Austin Bailey Foundation for their grants to support the work of this project.