Carol started volunteering with her local Community Sponsorship group, CHARIS Exeter, in 2018. Here she shares the toughest and best bits about Community Sponsorship and describes an emotional reunion at Exeter airport.
Before volunteering… I set up and ran a nursery and then had a 26-year career in family support.
I started volunteering…to find a new purpose after my husband passed away.
I chose Community Sponsorship because… I already knew of CHARIS Exeter through my church. They needed a female volunteer to support a refugee family coming from Syria.
The hardest thing about Community Sponsorship is… finding houses. To find a family home in Exeter for £715 a month [the rate of housing benefit] is nigh on impossible. Fortunately, we’ve found some very benevolent landlords who are willing to take reduced rent.
I’ll never forget… meeting the refugee family at Exeter airport. It turned out that there were two older daughters living in London, and one of them came to their airport with her husband and young children. She hadn’t seen her parents and siblings in five years. They had no idea she’d be there to meet them. When they came through, there was lots of hugging and crying – it was quite overwhelming. We realised we’d helped the family not just to reach safety, but to be reunited with their daughters after so many years apart.
When the family first arrived, my role was… quite consuming, which was just what I needed. I was busy maintaining their diary, coordinating lots of medical and bank appointments and visits from befrienders and English teachers. The family have been doing really well with their English.
Next time we resettle a family… I’ll be sure to welcome them with cups and saucers! I put lots of mugs in our first family’s kitchen cupboards. Later I discovered that they’d gone to the charity shop to find tiny cups for their Arabic coffee, which they serve from a little copper pot. They do use the mugs for tea though!
The best thing about Community Sponsorship has been… getting to know the family and watching them grow. I’ve learned so much from them. They lost their home; they left family behind; they’ve been through a lot of pain and trauma – and now they are motivated to help other people. The father is going to be a mentor for other refugees and the children are thinking about careers in nursing and human rights law. I find them so inspiring.
To someone considering Community Sponsorship, I’d say… do it. It will change your life!
Find out how you can join or set up a Community Sponsorship group.
Share
Read all news and insight from our initiatives
See Coverage of Reset UK in the press and media
Read our research projects and news
Come together locally to welcome a refugee family. Find out how Community Sponsorship helps refugee families in need build a new life in the UK with confidence and dignity.
There are so many ways to show your support. Find out more about how to get involved.
How do I sponsor a refugee family? How does the process work? Reset is here to support you every step of the way.
Wherever you are on the fulfilling and thrilling journey through Community Sponsorship, we have training courses, videos, articles and more, all designed to help your group and the family you support.
From drop-in sessions to UK-wide networking events, we bring together people and professionals involved in all stages of the Community Sponsorship journey.
Our toolkits are designed to make it easy for you to support community-led welcome, including resources for local groups, support for potential lead sponsors, and practical advice for Local Authorities.
Research, monitoring and evaluation are essential for making evidence-based decisions that help community-led welcome to flourish.
Make an extraordinary difference to the lives of people who have lost everything by signing up to our (free) Landlords for Refugees register.
Not everyone can donate their time, so if you are choosing to donate money today instead or as well as, thank you. Your generosity is vital to the work we do support community-led welcome of refugees.
We empower volunteers to welcome refugees into communities across the UK, and we’re inviting you to be part of our movement. Together, let’s shape a better future.
Help others by sharing your account. Why were you attracted to community-led welcome? What worked, what did you learn, what has the experience been like for you?
Community-led welcome isn’t about one organisation. We work with a range of organisations and individuals to deliver our work and to grow the movement.
