WPCA supports campaign to halt deportation
Amongst those awaiting deportation in England are two families taken from their homes in East Belfast. Comfort Adefowoju and her four children are one of those families and Willowfield Parish Community Association (WPCA) are backing a campaign to stop her and her family being deported back to Nigeria.
Earlier this week WPCA issued the following statment:
'Willowfield Parish Community Association wishes to express our support for the campaign to ask the Home Secretary to reconsider the decision that Mrs Comfort Adefowoju and her four children must be deported back to Nigeria.
During the time that Comfort and her children lived in East Belfast they were involved in a number of community activities organised by WPCA, including groups for children, parents and a support group for members of the African Community living in east Belfast.
Comfort was a well integrated member of the community here, and was well known to people in Willowfield. The older children were members of our homework clubs meeting in the Micah Centre on My Lady's Road.
WPCA's Family Support Worker, Su Finch says, "When we first met Comfort she was struggling to make ends meet, living alone with her four children and we were able to help her by providing meals and food for her. As she got to know us better she in turn was involved in supporting another mother in the community who also had practical needs. That is the kind of amazing person Comfort is - willing to help others when she herself also needed help.
"While we wait to hear the decision of the Home Office on Comfort's case we have continued to try to help meet the family's practical needs, sending clothes and pyjamas to the children in the deportation centre at Heathrow."
Their friends here in Willowfield wish that this family could return here, and hope that the Home Secretary will take a compassionate view of this case. WPCA is a community association operating in the Willowfield/ Woodstock area of East Belfast where Comfort and her family were living when they were in Belfast.'
For up to date information contact Hilary McClay - (028)9046 0105.