News

ASASN was awarded a small grant from the Catalyst Network UK to deliver a Tech Justice project for refugees and migrants.

The Kindling-funded project, Refugee Digital Safety & Power Circles, is exploring how refugees and migrant communities in the UK navigate digital systems, understand data rights, and experience online harms. The project builds real community confidence and contributes to a wider vision of tech justice and empowered, digitally confident local communities.

We successfully ran the sessions focusing on Community Listening Circles, engaging Afghan and Iranian refugee communities, including a separate session for women and young girls (18–25). In this session, participants shared experiences with:

• Digital barriers they face in their daily lives
• Online surveillance fears and concerns about how their information is monitored
• Using digital immigration systems (e.g., Home Office reporting apps)
• Data sharing between schools, the NHS, and other institutions
• Online abuse, identity harm, and challenges to privacy
• Barriers to digital access, including language, connectivity, and lack of guidance

Each circle included time for rest, reflection, and care, in line with the programme's value of Love.

These insights are already guiding the next step of the programme — co-design of Digital Confidence Cards — and we plan to continue testing and refining them in future sessions. This first session confirmed that small, reflective, and inclusive activities can make a meaningful difference in building digital confidence and community power.