Shortly after I returned to my old job in September I attended a Zoom meeting about refugee employment involving several different organisations. The chair had heard of a really good refugee employment project that ran in Oxford between 2001 and 2011 and he had been trying to find out more so that he could tell the meeting about successful ways of working. He was astonished to learn that I was its first coordinator and had got it off the ground and run it until 2007. So I told the group all about it.

This afternoon I was at another meeting with the same chair about English language provision for refugees, involving some of the same organisations and a few others. Towards the end of the meeting, he suggested a novel idea - might the education and employment groups combine? I put up my hand and told him about the Oxfordshire Refugee and Asylum Seeker Training, Education and Employment Partnership (ORASTEEP) which was exactly that and which ran very successfully from 2001. He asked whether anyone had any information about its composition or terms of reference. I could tell the group which organisations were involved and what what we did but I doubted any paperwork remained.

But...

I have extracted the hard drives from my broken PC, and have found someone who will copy all my old data onto a drive that my Mac can read. Today I dug out two earlier hard drives that my Mac will read (but not copy) and I discovered a report I wrote in 2005 that gives all the information needed.

If you don't want to reinvent a wheel, find a dinosaur!

Emergency blip out of the window just as the Zoom meeting was starting and I realised it would be dark by the time we finished.




Edit - Then I found the report on the website of the organisation I used to work for. You don't need dinosaurs after all. You just need archivists.