Chrisann Jarrett
Your own personal experience inspired you to set up Let us Learn. What kind of support does the organisation offer?
I created to support young migrants who are blocked from taking up their places at university because they do not qualify for student finance – young people who, like I was, are regarded as international students despite having lived in the UK most of their lives.
I was very fortunate to receive a New Futures Fund scholarship to study at 杏吧论坛, but realised there would be many other in my same situation who wouldn’t have that opportunity.
Our initial focus was campaigning for equal access to higher education, but the project has grown to provide more holistic support. Our partnership with allows us to provide advocacy, and we have an immigration supervisor to supplement our work. Recent legal aid cuts have seriously affected this area of law so offering that accessible pro bono representation and advice is very important.
Let Us Learn also runs a six-month leadership programme to help young people gain and develop essential skills they need to succeed in their careers.
What are its main achievements to date?
One of our first and greatest achievements was intervening in the hearing of the at the Supreme Court, providing case studies to call for a change in student finance rules that prevented young talented migrants from going to university. Hearing that the ruling was in our favour and learning that we helped to change the law meant a lot to us.
More recently, we’ve run a very successful campaign called #younggiftedandblocked to lobby 20 universities to increase the amount of scholarships available to young migrants who have grown up the UK but have temporary or indefinite immigration status. As a result, such individuals are now eligible to apply for 16 new scholarships.
When I set up Let us Learn in 2014 I didn’t quite realise how big it would become. In the beginning, it was only three of us in the room but within a few months we had 300 names on our database. Fast forward to now and we have over 1,000 people we are in contact with.
Mobilising