Bringing Them To A New Home

It's been a while...so what has Seeing Social been doing since those halcyon lockdown days?

I was lucky enough to maintain clients throughout 2020-21, but like a lot of people, I had a lot of downtime and so I threw myself into Twitter management for Oxford Mutual Aid, and I am still ensuring that people in Oxford who need food get it to this day. The fact that they were active on Twitter led to a corporate partnership with Beanies Masato, who regularly make donations of food and kitchen equipment via their C.S.R. campaign.

And then I read about Community Sponsorship. I read about a successfully placed family in Oxford and immediately thought, "this must happen again". Only issue was, I was shielding and couldn't go outside!

For those not in the know, Community Sponsorship is a way for a local group to bring a refugee family over to the U.K. You fundraise so you can find them a place to live, sort out English lessons, get their kids registered in school, help them find jobs, register them with doctors, etc. The organisation that helps facilitate this is Sponsor Refugees and you can read about them at https://www.sponsorrefugees.org/

I got in touch with Sponsor and expressed my interest. You really need a group to facilitate this, as it's very demanding time and skill wise. I was put in touch with a lady from a church, who managed to bring several people together who were able to help with accompaniment to medical and school appointments, arranging English lessons, help with benefits and banking. For a year we raised money and made connections with organisations locally who could help, I created a Private Group page on Facebook and Call To Action posts were shared to our local community group which resulted in funds, welcome gifts as they had is isolate on arrival, curtains and bedding as well as toys for the children. I discovered that landlords hung out on the Next Door platform and so we posted there when looking for a house and the family still live in the one owned by the landlady we found on there today.

So that's what I did in lockdown. Our 2 year commitment to the family has now ended and we wish them all the luck in the world for their new life.