The People of ARKH

The Current Team

ARKH’s current staff and volunteer team represents a broad cross section of Hull society. This page will provide profiles of several of the “key players”

Please be aware that this page is still under construction, we will be adding more profiles as and when our staff and volunteers finish have submitted their profile text.

Pat Didsbury

Abdulkadir O Ahmed (Kadir)

Kadir was a Director of ARKH and a qualified Immigration Advisor in all categories at OISC level 1. He has volunteered with ARKH since 2005 and is currently working towards an MA in Historical Research at the University of Hull. He has been instrumental in shaping ARKH’s Advice Drop-in since his arrival and continues to play a senior role in organising the service.

In his spare time he enjoys reading and watching football.

Bilal Qasab

Liz White

Liz White is English Coordinator and a Director of ARKH. She believes that all people who come to the UK from other countries deserve to be given the opportunity to learn English and that a lack of understanding of the language can lead non-English speakers to miss out on so much.

Four years ago she began a English class for women and quickly realised that it had to be a class which could cope with young babies and children as well as adult learners.  This is now the basis for running the class.  This can sometimes make it a complicated and busy session but, with a dedicated group of volunteers and enthusiastic learners, the sessions have been extremely successful and productive.

Liz has a teaching background and always loved the job, enjoying seeing the progress her pupils made.  She taught for almost 40 years, ending her career as Headteacher of Andrew Marvell School in Hull.

Since retirement, as well as continuing to teach at ARKH she has become an avid gardener, a somewhat lazy learner of Spanish and, when she gets the chance, a dabbler in various crafts including tapestry and knitting.

Ali Rasuli

Ben Butler

Ben was Projects Coordinator at ARKH but in November 2013 he moved on to pastures new. NRC(ARKH) would like to that Ben for all the hard work he committed in making NRC(ARKH) the success it is today.

Originally from Bradford, he has lived in Hull for 14 years and has worked with asylum seekers, refugees and other BME groups in Hull for over seven years. He has a varied work/academic background which takes in historical research, trade union politics, charity work and careers advice and guidance, he also has a PhD in history.

He has a passion for cricket, rugby league, boxing, politics, BBC 6 Music, Radio 4, punk and new wave music, independent cinema and real ale. He currently lives in east Hull and is married to Kate with whom he has a son.

Jamie Taylor

Jamie was the  “IT monkey” (as he puts it) at ARKH. He helped Ben to deliver training sessions, has set up the social media connections (Youtube, Twitter and this website) and seems to know a considerable amount about technology.
Jamie holds a BSc in Computer Science with Games Development and has studied Japanese for over 5 years, and is not particularly great at being professional or serious for extended periods of time; simply because he can see the humour in most things, ad points it out when necessary.

He was born in Cyprus, but has lived in Hull for 24 years.

He has a very wide range of interests which include such vague concepts as music, film, TV and books. He plays both electric and bass guitar and has a small collection of bass guitars, including a Paul McCartney style Hofner violin bass; which looks a lot like this one (click) except his is a righty.