Dear CBSO Team
I understand the need for your cause. Beyond the political debates, it is mostly left to civil society to take on the employment, education, housing, language, cultural identity issues and other real matters that confront immigrants and refugees in their new environments.
I have strong feelings and vital experience around these issues. I am South African and from 1976 to 1992 was a political refugee in Holland. Apart from going through the exile processes personally, I was active, throughout those years, in an organisation that represented South African refugees and that lobbied effectively for a number of policy changes.
Back in SA, I ran an NGO in Cape Town providing accredited Higher Education in the arts to disadvantaged young people from townships and rural areas. Other than donor funding our resources came from social enterprise projects strongly linked to business. Important, in this context, is that our work was vocational and we were ferociously focused on creating work and self-employment capacities, or connecting our graduates with arts industry employers.
We had a number of exchange projects with Swedish organisations, and all had a component that engaged with the concerns of a Swedish immigrant community.
I am also an award-winning playwright and have written a pile of articles, proposals, PR material - online and offline. I would be proud to be part of your team and hope you will consider my application.
Ian Bruce