What happened next: the refugee who came to stay and other stories

The housemates

After Helen Pidd and Yasser, her Syrian lodger, wrote about their house-share in January, they were inundated with offers of help, dinner invitations and football tickets. Readers asked how they, too, could host a refugee: an 89-year-old retired academic put up a friend of Yasser’s.

Burnage Academy, a boys’ school in south Manchester, invited Helen and Yasser to talk to their new-to-English students, then offered Yasser the opportunity to volunteer as a classroom assistant. Able, a private language school, gave him 10 hours a week free English tuition for as long as he wants it; Empowering Learning, a teacher-training consultancy in London, offered to sponsor Yasser through his teaching qualifications, so he could pick up the career he had so loved back home in Syria.

Yasser moved out in April, when his wife and toddler daughter arrived. They are now happily settled in north Manchester. He has a job stewarding for Manchester United and at Chester Races, and recently passed his driving test. After he left, Helen took in another refugee, a female academic from Damascus. She left in August and Helen is enjoying an empty house – for now.