A Teacher's Words Not to Fear Fighting for My Rights Stayed With Me Forever By Alliah Omar
I joined VODW's classes wanting to improve my skills and open up future opportunities, arriving with a familiar mix of nerves, excitement, and happiness over a year and a half spent in ESOL, IT, and Mediacom. I believed firmly that learning never stops, as long as a person remains willing, and that conviction shaped my entire experience.
The classes helped me grow in confidence, communication, and knowledge, three areas that build naturally on one another. During my sessions, I felt reconnected with myself, watched my stress ease, built confidence, grew more resilient, felt healed, and experienced a genuine sense of belonging, a full and meaningful transformation over the course of my time with VODW. One sentence in particular has stayed with me ever since, a teacher telling me not to be afraid to fight for my rights, words that clearly struck something deep and lasting.
I found the lessons and skills genuinely useful in my everyday life, and by the end of my classes I felt more capable and more confident. Graduation brought a pleasant surprise, I had not expected to receive a certificate of my own, a small but meaningful moment of recognition.
My gratitude toward my teachers is warm and appreciative, thanks for the opportunity to learn and grow. My hope for the future is to keep learning, keep growing, and meet other domestic workers along the way, continuing the sense of community that shaped my time at VODW.
That teacher's simple encouragement, don't be afraid to fight for your rights, sits at the very centre of everything VODW works toward, the campaigns for the right to change employer without restriction, the right to renew the ODW visa, the right to settlement, and the right to British citizenship. My story shows how a single moment of courage, spoken by a teacher and carried forward by a student, can plant the seed for a much larger fight, one I now feel ready to join with confidence rather than fear.
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