Eskander's Journey - Refugee Week 2022

Eskander ran for an hour in total darkness the night the military burned down his family home. His mother had told him to run to her brother’s house to find refuge: the military had already come in the night and killed his father and his brother, and he was likely to be in similar danger.
In April 2011 he left Ethiopia. This was only the beginning of a decade of turmoil that saw the teenage college student progress through his twenties working for two years without pay on a building site in Sudan, imprisoned in Libya by people smugglers, crossing the Mediterranean in a plastic dinghy, being subjected to a brutal assault by a group of men in Italy, living in a bus station near Milan and spending time in Direct Provision in Monaghan before finally boarding a bus to seek a new life of safety in Belfast in April 2019.
There are more than 100 million forcibly displaced people around the world*, people with stories like Eskander’s. Migrant Help supports thousands of people every year in the UK who have survived unfathomable journeys in search of safety, helping them to build new lives in the UK, to access the support and services they need, and working with communities to bridge gaps.