A desire for justice

Jackie Macadam offers a focus on the life and work of Val Brown who opened her family home to a Syrian refugee.

LOTS of people talk about ‘doing something’ to help refugees – but some people actually take it a step further.

Val Brown lives in Glasgow with her family and works for Christian Aid. She’s also a member of the World Mission Council of the Church of Scotland. Last year she and her family decided to offer a room to Omar, a refugee from Syria.

“It’s hard to remember exactly how I heard about the project,” she says.

“I think it was through a Positive Action in Housing e-mail and we had spoken about it as a family and come to the conclusion that ‘it would be a good thing to do’ but then never did anything about it. As the refugee crisis deepened, we were hearing the stories from our partner churches and Christian Aid partners across the globe, and getting a sense of what the people in Syria were facing we felt that we could offer a room in our home to someone who needed it, really on the premise that if the boot was on the other foot, we would hope someone would offer us a room in their home.”

As a mother of two children, it was a decision that everyone in the family had to make together.

Val was brought up in Shawlands, Glasgow and was involved from a young age through Sunday School and Brownies at South Shawlands Church.

“I spent a lot of happy years in South Shawlands Church, however, when we moved house up to Clarkston we decided to join Williamwood Church so that the children could go to Sunday School and youth organisations alongside their school friends. We really enjoy being part of the worshipping life at Williamwood, it’s a very active and friendly congregation. Alan is still a BB officer down in Shawlands so we keep good links there and stay in touch with the many friends we have.”

Val has been interested in working with people and following her faith since she was young.