Athlone's Leah takes up full-time role with asylum seeker charity
Around six weeks ago, Leah Moloney started working in a job that had never existed before.
A native of Abbey Lane in Athlone, she took up a role as Integration Support Worker for New Horizon, the local refugee and asylum seeker charity. In doing so, she became its first full-time employee.
The position was a natural fit for Leah, as she had been actively involved in supporting refugees and asylum seekers in a voluntary capacity for a number of years.
Speaking to the Westmeath Independent at New Horizon's recently-created office space, in the Vincent's charity shop in Athlone, she spoke about adjusting to the demands of her unique role in this area.
"It's challenging in the sense that I have no blueprint to follow. I'm just making it up as I go along, figuring out what works and what doesn't," she said.
"But the flipside of that is it's really exciting, because I have that freedom, and I do thrive with having freedom and being able to bring my ideas to the table."
Leah's work involves a lot of one-to-one interactions with new arrivals to Ireland. She said people who have been in the country for a year or less often tend to be "in a difficult situation emotionally" as they adjust to their new environment.
"Obviously I can't share anything personal, but the stories I hear are things that you see on the news. I'm listening to some very harrowing personal stories.
"People often tell me about their life in their home country, and how they didn't want to leave but they had to, and I think that's something important that we should remember.
"No one just comes here unless they have a really good reason. Our own ancestors had the 'Irish wakes', where they didn't necessarily want to leave but had to, and every single person that I've worked with has been like that."
Grant funding was provided for Leah's role, which is in conjunction with Doras, another migrant support organisation based in Limerick.
The job was established in response to the significant rise over the last 12-14 months in the number of Ukrainian nationals and asylum seekers, or international protection applicants, in the Athlone area.
Leah said the increase in the number of displaced people locally over the last year or so meant there was a real need for more volunteers to get involved in offering support in various ways.
"A year ago, New Horizon was supporting about 350 international protection applicants in the Athlone area. Now that has risen to about 1,500, so even with my appointment as a full-time worker, it's not enough," she said.
"I know what my own capacity is, and there's been a lot of things that I've just not been able to get to so far, so I'm hoping to be able to recruit more volunteers to help manage the workload.
"We need help with things things like administration, with managing different projects we have going on, and of course if someone has specialised skills that would be very welcome too.
"And people could also maybe help with the 'one to one' direct support side of things, which is a lot of what I do. It can involve helping people with anything from education to employment to finding a football club for their child, and sometimes it can be more complex as well."
If anyone is interested in volunteering, they can reach her by email: leah.moloney@newhorizonathlone.org
A past pupil of Summerhill Primary School and Our Lady's Bower, Leah's third level education involved studying psychology in Trinity College. While on an Erasmus programme in the Netherlands she studied cross-cultural psychology, which deepened her existing interest in migration and human rights.
On her return to Dublin she undertook a dissertation on a related topic ('Constructions of Identity Among Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Direct Provision') and became involved in volunteering with organisations such as Refugee and Migrant Solidarity Ireland.
In Athlone, she organised a toy drive for children in the direct provision centre in Lissywollen in December 2019. Along other volunteers, she then hosted a fundraiser and integration event for Ukrainian arrivals at The Venue, on Church Street, last year.
"We raised some funds for the Irish Red Cross, but what was most important for me was to do something fun for these newly-arrived Ukrainians, welcome them to Athlone, and introduce them to other Irish people. It went really well and we had loads of people show up, which was brilliant," she said.
Leah is a fluent French speaker and one of the benefits of her new job is getting to use the language while working in her home town.
"I absolutely love French, and I was speaking loads of French today already," she said. "A lot of asylum seekers speak French because they're from Algeria or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, so it's proving really useful."
On social media there appears to have been a rise in anti-migrant sentiment over the last year or so, but Leah says this is something she tries not to focus on.
"It makes me very upset and frustrated to see such vitriol, but my strategy is to actually ignore it," she said.
"In actual daily life in Athlone, as someone who works in this space, I have not come across anyone who has been that way. Everyone I've met recently, and even before I got this job, has been very empathetic towards refugees and asylum seekers and has wanted to help."
She said some people have the wrong impression of refugees and asylum seekers simply because they haven't spoken to them face-to-face.
"When you promote integration and realise that these people are just part of our daily lives, they're our colleagues, they're our friends, they're in our sports clubs... that helps to counteract that ignorance or misinformation, because people are hearing the reality of it.
"My approach is to not focus too much on having arguments with someone on Facebook who would be anti-immigration, it's more to focus on sharing the positive stories and promoting integration."
Both in her new job and outside of it, Leah likes to keep busy. She teaches French in the evenings, works on her own original music, and runs Between Two Books, the official book club of the band Florence and the Machine.
As she settles into her new job, she said it's one that's already proving hugely rewarding.
"Every one of the refugees and asylum seekers I've been working with has been beyond grateful for anything that I, or New Horizon as a whole, has done for them and that's incredibly moving and fulfilling.
"Knowing that what I do, and what New Horizon does, is genuinely making a difference in a meaningful way - whether that's helping someone prepare for an international protection interview, helping someone prepare for the arrival of a baby, or (arranging) English language classes - just means the absolute world to me," she concluded.