The Refugee Council’s celebrations for Refugee Week 2012 (18-24 June) kicked off with events this weekend, with more to follow this week:

On Saturday, despite rainy weather, 12 teams competed in the Leeds Refugee World Cup, co-ordinated by the Refugee Council Leeds office. There was a full day of great games and the final was played between Luso Action (last year’s winners) and ATAY (Azer Turk Association Yorkshire), with Luso Action winning the trophy. The ‘fair play’ trophy went to RETAS following the rules of the game. The prizes were presented by the Lord Mayor of Leeds who also gave a short speech.

The Refugee Council held a ‘Human Library’ at the Celebrating Sanctuary festival in London on Sunday, where interested passers-by chose refugee ‘books’ from countries around the world including Sri Lanka, Uganda and Iraq and listened to their stories.

Tonight, our Chief Executive Donna Covey will join a discussion panel at an event, ‘Protecting People – Rebuilding Lives’, at the Jewish Museum to launch their Refugee Stories exhibition. Donna Covey will be joined by the UN refugee agency’s representative in the UK Roland Schilling, journalist David Aaronovitch and Edie Friedman from JCore to discuss the challenges facing refugees today.

The World City: Refugee Stories photographic exhibition launches at the Jewish Museum in partnership with the Refugee Council on World Refugee Day (Wednesday). The photos tell the stories of refugees who have come to the UK over the last nine decades. You can also see the Refugee Council’s film, ’60 years and beyond’ and an animation about the journey one of our young clients made from Afghanistan to reach safety.

Tomorrow, for World Refugee Day, a number of our supporters across the country are holding RefuTea parties to bring people in their community together in support of refugees over a cup of tea, and to raise funds for the Refugee Council. In honour of this, the Buttercup cake shop in Westfield shopping centre, Stratford, is donating 15% of its profits to the Refugee Council for one day only!

The Refugee Cricket Project team, supported by the Refugee Council’s Children’s Section, is playing the Free Foresters on Wednesday at 5pm at Cricket for Change ground in Wallington. We wish them the best of luck!

On Friday, we will be attending Refugee Week’s Casablanca event at the Victoria and Albert Museum, to mark the 70th anniversary of the film, and to hear broadcaster Samira Ahmed in conversation and Craig Taylor, author of the Londoners, discussing the impact the most famous film about exile has had. Recommended by Timeout magazine.

Please don’t forget to tell us what you are doing for Refugee Week on Twitter at @RefugeeCouncil and #RefugeeWeek, or on our Facebook page

Visit the Refugee Week website to find out what you can do in your local area.