Navigating Britain – e-Book Promotion

Published by: Fatkma Mustafa

Published on: 19 Aug, 2020

Presenting TGIUK’s first eBook; an anthology of migrant stories from finding your feet on arrival to the UK, humorous anecdotes and “fish out of water moments” to helpful career advice. 

We are very proud to present our very first e-book. An anthology of migrant stories. Ranging from finding your feet on arrival to the UK, humorous anecdotes and fish out of water moments to helpful career advice. Let’s begin your journey in the UK, Together. To launch the release of our first e-book we chatted to TGIUK Co-founder and Director, Fatkma Bermeo.

Why did you get involved with TogetherintheUK?

In 2015 I attended a ‘Women in Transport’ event and this is where I met fellow TGIUK Founder, Teresa Norman. Teresa mentioned that she wanted to create a resource for migrants coming to the UK where they could learn about life here from other migrants, by speaking to and sharing their stories. I thought it was a fantastic idea and something that really resonated with me as a migrant myself and I knew I wanted to be involved. That is how myself, Teresa, Kosta and Johann came together and TGIUK was born in late 2015.

I moved to the UK from Colombia in 2010, I completed my studies in English language and then a Master’s in Civil Engineering. It took me 2 more years to find a job working in this industry. There are a lot of things I wish I had known when I arrived here, from the little things about basic daily life to more complicated things such as finding a job, or knowing that qualifications and certificates need to be translated and validated before they can be used here.

TGIUK is still a very new organisation but we have worked hard to build a strong foundation. Our website gives people a place to be heard and to hear other migrants’ stories and learn tips and information about daily life in the UK. We have also conducted research about the challenges we face as migrants when moving to the UK and this resulted in a report full of insights: ‘Moving Matters’ https://www.togetherintheuk.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/report1.pdf

We have held high profile events, , such as our last event in February at the Union Chapel, where over 100 people came together to hear migrants’ stories and experiences first hand, as well as poetry and music.

I know that the person’s experience of migrating is personal to them and at the same time there is something we have in common, we have all left the countries that we were born in and created a life in the UK,. This helps us develop our community.

Why an e-book?

From the success of the TGIUK website and our events, we were aware that people enjoyed reading and hearing other people’s stories about how they came to the UK and the obstacles they faced. We thought it would be a great idea to take the most popular blogs from the website and combine them with the most useful.

We are so lucky as an organisation to have found some fabulously talented volunteers, who are willing to work with us. This year has also created a unique opportunity for organisations such as TGIUK, as people found themselves either with more time to volunteer or a greater want to help others and our team of volunteers is the largest it has ever been

Our great team members who made this possible are: Sam Carter who designed the ebook and make it vibrant and colourful, Sophie MacKenzie who created the fabulous illustrations on the TGIUK website and has created four original illustrations for the e-book. We benefitted enormously from Hattie Callery, who edited the book for us and are looking forward to and Samadi Bermeo making it all happen with her work on digital marketing..

The e-book has been a very collaborative project and features stories from our community, as well as from those who work in TGIUK, it is something that we are very proud of and hope will help other migrants coming to the UK as well as locals to understand what migrants face. As an organisation that receives no funding all our work and events are funded by us and we hope that by selling the e-book at £2.49 we will be able to raise some funds to put back into further projects and events in the future and expand our reach to more people and widen the TGIUK community.

TGIUK are proud to present our first beautifully illustrated e-book ‘Let’s be together in the UK: Navigating Britain’. A collection of migrant stories, by migrants for migrants.

#LetsbetogetherintheUK #NavigatingBritain #TogetherintheUK #TGIUK #Migrants #Refugees #UK #London #MigrantsoftheWorld #Lifeisgood #UKSeaside #LearningEnglish #Redundancy #MentalWellbeing

Support TGIUK by purchasing our e-BOOK for just £2.49 here at this link on our website, and let us help you begin your journey in the UK, together.

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