1000 people have been welcomed through Community Sponsorship!
I’m Bea, the Campaigns and Policy Lead here at Reset. I first joined Reset in 2022, however, my journey with Community Sponsorship (and Reset!) started way back in 2017.
I started a Community Sponsorship group in my local area, Peckham in South London, when I was 18. I was on my gap year, interested in politics and wanted to do something practical to support refugees.
This is when I found out about Community Sponsorship. A tangible way to bring together your community and welcome refugees to your neighbourhood. What sounds better than that?!
I got to work straight away. I printed off leaflets at work. I spent two weeks leafletting my local area asking people who wanted to help refugees come to a meeting at our community centre. I’d visited a meeting hosted by Herne Hill Welcomes Refugees to understand a bit more about what Community Sponsorship is. If you are thinking about doing Community Sponsorship, I’d recommend reaching out to Reset or a nearby group to ask for advice!
I was told to expect 15-20 people at the first meeting. You can imagine my surprise when over 100 people turned up!
Stood in front of this crowd, I realised I knew very little about this scheme. However, the energy in the room and excitement of this crowd led me to believe that no matter what, I didn’t need to be an expert on this, we just needed a community effort. We had people who’d recently moved to the area and wanted to meet other locals, people who’d lived there for over 30 years and people who were from nearby neighbourhoods who wanted to get involved in showing that refugees are welcome.
On that first night I asked people to commit to meeting a week later. I’d recommend in the early stages trying to get people together regularly and give out tasks. In the second meeting we split people into the teams I’d created based on what was recommended on the Home Office application (housing, fundraising, education, benefits, healthcare, and befriending).
Once groups were sorted, I asked someone to lead each one and schedule to meet and go over what they might need. I have to be honest, the information available at this time was not much! Having worked at Reset, I know that there is so much more available to groups, and so much more guidance.
To raise money we had community picnics (run mostly by my mum!), pub quizzes, wedding registry donations and local business donations. I spent a lot of time going to local cafes, businesses, getting our local Refugee Response group all on the same page about this. I wanted to get this right, but I know that you definitely don’t need to be as much of a planner or as prepared as I was!
We found a local landlord with support from another Community Sponsorship group. They’d done a ‘landlord drive’ whereby they handed out leaflets and spoke at local schools asking people to spread the word of the scheme in the hopes that a local landlord would consider offering their property. People find all different ways to get the accommodation through Community Sponsorship, Reset offer lots of advice about creative ways to think about this!
We went to our local Law Centre for training on how to understand the benefits system and apply for Universal Credit. Reset offer this training now – it is less ‘do-it-yourself’ and there is so much more support available as I mentioned earlier!
Once we had all of the bases covered, we put it into our Home Office application. Once approved, we were matched with a family who arrived in March 2019.
The group still see the family to this day. The family have settled in and sometimes work with us at Reset to help share the message of Community Sponsorship. I cannot believe how far this scheme has come, I am so proud of everyone’s involvement, I can’t wait to see how many more people can be welcomed this way!
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.
