When the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd launched the Full Community Sponsorship scheme at Lambeth Palace with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, today, the Home Office released details of some people already taking part in the project to help resettle Syrian refugees.
Jools Payne, a mother of three from Oswestry, Shropshire felt compelled to help refugees after hearing about a Syrian mother who travelled thousands of miles to Germany. A volunteer with the charity Refugee Action, Payne has been showing refugees around the local community, explaining how the library and fire services work and introducing them to the local butcher, who is now happy to stock halal meat.
"It is such a pleasure to be getting to know the families who have arrived here having fled such desperately dangerous and sad circumstances," Payne said. "I have learnt that it is really important to be mindful of their needs and requirements above anything else. Helping them to settle into our town and understand how things work is a practical thing to be able to do and so many of us want to show that we care and refugees are welcome here."
Meanwhile, in Kensington and Chelsea, a couple have let a two-bedroom flat to a family of Syrian refugees at a reduced rent consistent with the Local Housing Allowance, for a period of three years. The move by husband and wife Simon Winchester and Phillippa Giles comes amid cooperation between the Council and a local Welcome Committee made up of faith and voluntary organisations to resettle the refugees.
Volunteers from the Welcome Committee have furnished the flat with items donated by the local community, and the family will be supported by a local authority caseworker and a team of voluntary mentors.
Winchester said: "We were moved by the plight of the homeless refugees [who are] families like our own, thrown out of their homes, their lives turned upside down. We hope that by letting a family stay in our flat we are helping in a small way and would encourage others who are in a position to help to do so."
Thirdly, the international development agency World Jewish Relief has funded an employment and training programme aimed at helping Syrian refugees get jobs n the UK, launched in February and piloted by Horton Housing Association in Bradford.
The development agency hopes to broaden the programme across the UK and support 1,000 of the 20,000 Syrian refugees arriving under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement (VPR) scheme announced by the Government last September.
"[We have] received many calls from our community for us to play a key part in a Jewish response [to the VPR scheme]," said the chief executive of World Jewish Relief, Paul Anticoni. "The gap in provision for employment services for refugees, combined with our extensive experience in livelihood development, means that we hope to make a significant contribution to their experience of settling in the UK, after the war and persecution that so many faced in Syria."
