A vicar's wife has organised a special meeting in a bid to build bridges between refugees and local people.

Rosie Tudge - wife of the Reverend Paul Tudge the vicar of All Saints' in Ilkley - wants to give refugees a chance to tell their own stories.

And she says although many of her Bosnian refugee friends were nervous about speaking out in the wake of recent media coverage surrounding refugees, that in itself had heightened the need for a meeting to challenge the stereotypes.

While living in their previous parish - St James's Woodside at Horsforth - the Tudges were in-volved with Alert, a Churches Together in Horsforth initiative set up during the Bosnian crisis to help refugees.

Mrs Tudge twice travelled to Austria's border with the for-mer Yugoslavia to help bring busloads of refugees back to Britain.

She said: "Because of all the coverage a lot of our friends are a bit jittery and cautious about coming forward.

"I think they feel that Ilkley - like every other place - is somewhere that may harbour some ill will towards them but I'll be persuading them that we need enlightening.

"Quite a bit of hysteria is being whipped up through the use of words such as 'bogus' and 'floods of refugees' but that's why this is something we should do now."

Mrs Tudge added: "I hope the meeting will help build bridges, educate people and help them understand that to become a refugee is often not a choice but something that just happens.

"Most are here and had to flee their countries - which have of-ten been home to their families for centuries - through no choice of their own.

"Many have been able to inte-grate very well - they've got jobs and have been given mortgages. They are not scroungers, they are taxpayers."

She said far from heading to Britain to claim benefits, many were professionals who had only come because their lives were in danger at home.

Mrs Tudge said many of the Bosnian refugees were still living around Leeds - some in the Aireborough and Pudsey areas - with some having spent years retraining so they could resume their careers in this country.

l The meeting is to be staged at the Oasis Cafe on Church Street, Ilkley, at 8pm on May 24.

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