Maryam Ginwalla has recently completed a student insight placement with WCIA, through Cardiff University’s Centre for Student Life. Here she reflects on her work experience, and shares some of her outputs.
From May to July 2024, I had the opportunity to volunteer with the WCIA in the Temple of Peace to work on a project that was very meaningful to me. The team at WCIA allowed me to incorporate my own interests and areas of my other volunteering into my project with them, which I am very thankful for. My role was an insight into the Peace Heritage of Wales, for which I researched Wales’ links with refugees and sanctuary movements.
I started my project by outlining my key ideas, deciding which communities I was going to focus on. I originally was going to do a timeline, however the WCIA website already has a timeline of refugees in Wales, dating back to WW1. Instead of expanding the already existing information of the refugee groups on the timeline, I instead decided to focus on communities that weren’t on the timeline but are still predominantly large communities across Wales. This led me to choose the Yemeni, Ukrainian, Palestinian, Bangladeshi, Kurdish and Sudanese communities.
Most of my time doing this project was spent researching about the different communities, and I created a list of questions for myself that allowed me to stay on track when doing my research. These questions also meant that I was including a similar range of information across my research, making it consistent. After I had researched and written it out, I then uploaded it all to the WCIA editing page, where I learnt how to create hyperlinks that were embedded in my texts, along with creating buttons to go onto a separate page.
This insight opportunity has been extremely valuable, as I study history at university and have really enjoyed learning about how the Temple of Peace archives their material and also digitise it. My project has also allowed me to learn more about my interests and combine it with a form of history- researching the histories of these marginalised communities and their link within Wales is extremely relevant to future histories that will be written about the diverse community across Wales.
I want to extend a huge thank you to the team at WCIA and the Temple of Peace for being so welcoming and inviting us along to many events within the Temple, such as Temple Tours, helping to restore the National Garden of Peace and going through the archives in the attic! This project specifically wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Craig Owen and Sam Mutter, as instead of making me do any project, they helped to create one for me out of my interests.
