Everybody loves a cup of tea
At Scottish Refugee Council, we work together with refugees to help make sure their voices are heard, to help them achieve their aspirations and use their skills, and to help them connect and bond with local communities – whether on their street, in the classroom, at work, on the football pitch or in a knitting group.
The Cup of Tea with a Refugee campaign uses one of Scotland’s favourite pastimes to bring people together. Everybody loves a cup of tea.
Changing the conversation
Refugees are often just seen as statistics or news stories. We want to change the conversation and show that they’re real people, just like us. So why not join us over a brew so we can show some proper Scottish hospitality and find out why we’re not that different after all.
Read our stories
Some of us like a big cup of builder’s tea, some of us go for a dainty cup of Earl Grey, while for others it’s got to be a samovar of their mother’s Spiced Chai. Whatever your preference, however you drink it, it’s clear that we’ve all got one thing in common – we all really, really love our tea.
But it’s not just a hot drink that we love. We all love to share a good story over a cup of tea too. We asked some local refugees living in Scotland for their best tea stories. You can read some of our favourite ones here.
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Hello. My name is Yasmin.
Hello. My name is Yasmin. I’m originally from Iran but I now call Glasgow home.
Read my story
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Hello my friends. I’m Michael!
Hello my friends. I’m Michael! I came to Scotland from Nigeria.
Read my story
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Hello. My name is Arman.
Hello. My name is Arman. I come from Iran but I have been living in Glasgow for six years.
Read my story
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Hi there. I’m Violet.
Hi there. I’m Violet, a refugee from a country called Malawi.
Read my story
Get involved
Organise your own event
We all love a good chat over a cuppa. Why not host your own event and find out what it's like to be a refugee living in Scotland?
If your community or group fancies getting together to organise a special Cup of Tea with a Refugee event, it’s pretty simple.
You can download everything you need to get involved below.
Get an event packDrink a little more tea
Look out for us as we will be handing out free teabags at locations across Scotland. Each tea bag features one of our refugees’ stories about their love of tea.
Donate to our campaign
Your donations really make a difference. To give money to Scottish Refugee Council today, Text TCUP22 followed by the amount you want to give (e.g. £5) to 70070.
A Cup of Tea with a Refugee FAQs
Refugees are often just seen as statistics or news stories. We want to change the conversation and show that they’re real people, just like us. The Cup of Tea with a Refugee campaign uses one of Scotland’s favourite pastimes to bring people together, to relax together over a cuppa and to make connections.
Scottish Refugee Council has launched this campaign but as a small charity we don’t have the resources to help out individual events with practical help. Instead, please download our event pack for important practical tips and advice on running a safe and fun event.
Please download our event pack for advice on whether you should ask refugee participants to be part of your event – and if you do please think about how you can sensitively involve them in the planning of an event. There is a list of refugee community organisations. You can also find contacts for refugee-assisting groups across Scotland.
Unfortunately we don’t have funding to help out with the costs of running events.
We will offer any support possible. Unfortunately we can’t help with financial support for events but we are looking into this for the future.
Yes, the main purpose of the events is not fundraising but if you would like to raise money for Scottish Refugee Council as part of it then we will use the money towards our work supporting refugees and advancing refugees’ rights. There is more practical information about funding in the event download pack.
Please do! There is no reason why not, a cup of tea and a chat is universal.
Scottish Refugee Council’s website is a great starting point. British Red Cross has some useful facts and figures or a blog post about three key facts.
Contact media@scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk in the first instance.
You can find out more on our main website.
We had a long discussion about this and refugees, of course, are like anyone, complex multi-faceted people with a wealth of experience and stories. We agreed during consultation that the name worked as a simple initial way of communicating the campaign, and the campaign itself should allow people to get to know one another as people, rather than labels.
'Cup of Tea with a Refugee' is an initiative developed by Scottish Refugee Council. To find out more about what we do, visit our main site.