How Arash went from facing homelessness as a refugee to getting offers to study physics at University.
Arash came to the UK as an asylum seeker from Iran. But once he received his refugee status, he was only given one week before he had to leave the Home Office accommodation he had been staying in. “I tried to find a few places and rent a room but they were all rejected because I didn’t have bank statements or a guarantor.”
“I was emotionally not in a good mental place. Within those 7 days I was just so stressed and stuff, like honestly, it wasn’t good.” To add to the pressure, there was a shortage of Arash’s ADHD medication at the time, “I was going through withdrawal symptoms … and I had just broken up with my ex.”
“I’ve experienced homelessness before, not in the UK, but, you know, that was a trigger, if that makes sense. It was just feeling that it’s going to happen again.”
He called the council of his London borough, but did not get a call back. So he knew he had to take matters into his own hands.
“There was this other organisation that I called, which referred me to New Horizon. It’s like an LGBT kind of organisation, Stonewall Housing. They referred me to New Horizon and told me to go to the Youth Hub.”
The Youth Hub is the only youth specific emergency accommodation in London, that we run in partnership with DePaul UK.
Arash stayed at the Youth Hub for a couple of months before moving into a long-term supported accommodation project we run in partnership with Origin Housing.
Artwork that Arash created at a workshop at the Youth Hub
About the importance of getting this housing support Arash says, “Housing … that’s something that I think most people don’t really realise or don’t really appreciate … People don’t really talk about it because it is thought that it should be there … but I think it’s really important because it’s just so fundamental.
“I mean, it was really important in terms of my progress because without [housing], basically, you can’t do studies on the streets, for example.”
It was months later while at P99 that the council eventually rang Arash back, but offered him a place in Birmingham – totally unsuitable because of his college and job in London.
At the moment, Arash is working full-time as a barista. “Emily [Jobs, Education and Training worker] helped me a lot with that. She basically found the job and prepared me for interview because it was my first job ever in the UK. She helped a lot, honestly, I really appreciate her help.”
But Arash’s dream is to study Natural Sciences majoring in Physics at Cambridge University. He passed his interview and received an offer to study there from this Autumn!
However, it is conditional on him passing his resits. “I basically had done my A levels before. I did it in one year, last year, and I got A*, A, A. But I got the offer and [Cambridge] want me to do an A*, A*, A and sit all the exams at the same time.”
Staff at New Horizon helped Arash with preparations for his interview, get mitigating circumstances from Cambridge to allow for him to take resits (which they don’t usually allow), and gave him a grant to pay for his resits.
“I mean, it’s Cambridge. It’s amazing … it’s surreal.”
Thanks to the hard work of our Accommodation Projects Team, Arash has just moved from P99 into another supported accommodation flat in North London. It is a studio flat so he has his own space to concentrate on his studies.
“When I was moving out from P99, I was feeling the same way [as I did when I was homeless]. All those, like, experiences and those, like, traumas. But what I was definitely happy about was that I had somewhere else to go.”
Arash already has an offer to study Physics at Kings College London, so whether in Cambridge or London, come Autumn Arash will be making a new start as a student with a very bright future ahead of him.
He says, “My life changed [since coming to New Horizon] … I never thought I could get into Cambridge.
“All the progress that I made, I don’t think I would have been able to make it, honestly. New Horizon is actually making a difference.
“If I were in a situation in the future that I could like donate or something I would definitely … to pay it forward.”
A shamrock badge that was made by Arash on St Patrick’s Day as a good luck token from New Horizon. Here is it attached to his physics revision.
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