SFI's UK committee opens first overseas office in Southall
Incidentally, when the UK committee was launched at the foundation conference on June 4, 2022, it was also the first international unit of the SFI. The organisation now has a presence in 30 universities across the UK, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, with a total of 341 members at last count, with a majority of them being students from Kerala, according to the organisers.
'We have been able to create a structure under the UK committee in the last three years and have now organisation committees in six cities — London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, and Portsmouth — while there are members from even more cities. Incidentally, a majority of our members are first-timers who did not have any previous association with the organisation when they were back home,' said Nikhil Mathew, secretary, UK committee.
P.S. Sanjeev, SFI Kerala State secretary, said the UK committee opening an office was a significant development, indicating the increasing relevance of the outfit beyond. It was indeed the outfit's first major office on foreign soil, he said.
He added that the organisation's UK committee primarily intervenes in the issue of racism faced by foreign students from academic and non-teaching staff alike. One of the most important interventions by the UK committee was against the mass failing of 70 students, predominantly from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, at a university in Scotland, allegedly on racist grounds.
Housing is another challenge that students from India are often caught unawares of, thanks to exploitation by agents. The SFI UK committee has identified this as another area for intervention to raise collective awareness about the issue among the student community.
The committee is set to host Sambhaji Bhagat, a Dalit activist and revolutionary balladeer, at the University of Edinburgh later this week. 'We organise arts and sports fests and academic talks. The idea is to help Indian students remain connected to their cultural roots. We also want to help them deal with emerging problems like the change in immigration laws and increasing difficulty in finding jobs,' said Mr. Mathew, a final-year PhD student in International Development at the University of Edinburgh.
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