Displaced People in Action

Tonight something important in my life came to an end and something new began. The change was just a formality really.

Since 2001 I have been involved with Displaced People in Action or DPIA as it’s known to anyone of importance in the Welsh asylum village.

Funded initially in 2000 by the Diana Fund, DPIA completed some crucial work with asylum seeking children and their families. I became its Chair in 2002 and since then we have employed some fantastic people to carry on the work in terms of children’s activities, volunteering and community development as well as placement in work schemes. Tonight, it was recorded that our refugee doctors training scheme is going from strength to strength. Some 85 doctors have registered with the scheme and a good number of them are now working in the NHS. The scheme was made possible through money from the Welsh Assembly Government.

For good bureaucratic reasons we decided to kill DPIA off and create something new imaginatively called DPIA Ltd. It will be a new body for a new era. The asylum seekers and the refugees are still there but we don’t hear so much about them any more. I guess with the advent of eastern European migrants we have found somebody new to be bothered about.