Sam Pordale with a fellow student campaigner. Credit: Sam Pordale.
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When Afghan refugee Sam Pordale told his friends that he’d been picked as one of Big Issue’s Changemakers of 2024, they “didn’t believe him”.
“When I went back to the [asylum] hotel and told the others that I was a Changemaker, they told me, ‘That’s not possible, you’ve only been here one year,’” Pordale recalls. “One guy was shaking his head.”
“It can feel like a prison in there. It is hard to feel you could enter the community and make a change.”
24-year-old Pordale – who spent six months in an asylum hotel after arriving in the UK on a small boat – has certainly been a force for change. After earning a scholarship to study at the University of Warwick, he began campaigning to ‘Lift the Ban’, urging the government to give asylum seekers the right to work and study. He also volunteers with the Student Action for Refugees (STAR) network, teaching English at the hotel he used to live in and helping others apply for university.
Every year the Big Issue releases its list of 100 Changemakers to celebrate the groups and individuals rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make the world a better place than they found it. Pordale says his Changemaker nomination – shared with his University of Warwick peer Angel Nakhle – “changed his life”.
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“It was so meaningful to us. We had to read the email twice, we couldn’t believe it,” he remembers.
Pordale’s journey from Kabul to Warwick began in 2021, after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.
Having worked with the previous government, his family became targets overnight. Fearing capture, Pordale hid in the luggage hold of a minivan and was smuggled across the border into Iran, an escape that began his “harrowing” nine-month journey to the UK.
The then-22-year-old reached Europe on a six-day boat ride from Istanbul across the Mediterranean. Last year, some 3,160 migrants died undertaking the crossing.
After stints in a Sicilian refugee camp and rough sleeping in Dunkirk, he made it across the English Channel in a small boat and was placed in a hotel for asylum seekers in the West Midlands.
“When I got here, people were nice to me. I was surprised – when I got out of the boat, the people who did the arrival interview were smiling, they were so nice,” Pordale said.
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“But at the hotel, you are broken down. When people hear ‘hotel’, they think it’s a luxury thing. But it feels like a prison, because you aren’t allowed to do anything.”
Volunteering for the British Red Cross became his lifeline. Pordale connected with the University of Warwick through this work, and in 2023 was accepted on a scholarship as a politics and international studies student.
Asylum seekers can be subject to vicious scapegoating in the UK. Earlier this month, right-wing rioters attacked at least two asylum hotels, throwing bricks at police and breaking windows. But the horrific racism will not deter Pordale.
“When that happened, at first I felt unwelcome here. I felt like I felt in Afghanistan, like I am not welcome here,” he said. “But then I saw so many other people standing up for asylum seekers and refugees, and I got a lot of messages of support. So I felt more welcome.”
Right-wing thugs claim that asylum seekers are a drain on public finances. But a report released by the Commission on the Integration of Refugees (CIR) earlier this year found that refugees – if granted the right to work – could plug the country’s labour shortages and generate £1.2bn for the economy within five years.
Instead of supporting the valuable contribution asylum seekers could make, the government is spending millions housing them in migrant accommodation.
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By teaching English in these places, Pordale hopes to provide some of the people stuck there with hope.
“So many of the people [in the hotel] have talents,” Pordale says. “But mentally they are crushed, they don’t see any hope,” he said.
“Everyone has a different story in life, and no one wants to be a refugee. It’s something that people are forced into, not something that we choose. And everyone deserves a second chance.”
Nominations are now open for Changemakers 2025. Pordale has some words of wisdom for those who are thinking of nominating someone.
“You should go for it,” he said. “It has changed my life. You have to go for it. We need to highlight the work to inspire others. It will make a change.”
This Christmas, 3.8 million people across the UK will be facing extreme poverty. Thousands of those struggling will turn to selling the Big Issue as a vital source of income - they need your support to earn and lift themselves out of poverty.
