Report from the Trustees

While the pandemic has meant the pause button for resettlement, the focus has been solely on resettled families. RRN’s volunteers have adapted quickly and embraced technologies such as Zoom and WhatsApp to deliver RRN’s growing education and employment programmes. In this quarter’s newsletter, you can learn how one of our newest volunteers, Mella Gavanescu, together with existing volunteers, are delivering an online women’s network, enabling our Syrian ladies to regularly practice their English and strengthen their bonds of friendship.

We have also learnt that keeping things personal delivers better results, so our 1-2-1 virtual education and employment programme led by Hilary, our qualified ESOL teacher, has been a great success, helping individuals overcome their own specific barriers, and enabling all our learners to secure either further study places or work experience. Progress rests partly on RRN’s success at working closely with our local volunteers, stakeholders, in this case working with Job Centre Plus, local colleges and employers. Another success resulting from RRN’s collaborative approach is that we are all reliably informed about refugee-related resources like RISE (Refugee Integration South East England). In this case, both our resettled families and our volunteers can access and use RISE’s extensive training and cultural courses and programmes – check out the links below for further details.

We continue to benefit from Nadia’s deep field expertise and experience which ensures RRN not only plays a key role regionally, one that belies our size, but also means RRN plays an advocacy role on the national level, important because it shapes what we can do here in Hampshire and West Sussex. RRN were signatories to a joint statement produced by Refugee Action in response to the Government’s consultation on the New Plan for Immigration. If you are concerned about the current UK govt plans – and you should be – then, I am sorry to say, this will not allay your fears.

As the resettlement schemes hit play again, RRN is looking for new landlords. We know that landlords are most likely to materialize when they have heard about RRN so we share a few simple tips on how you can help spread the word. Please help if you can as it has a real impact. We are also planning to increase our communication activity to drive awareness and donations, so we are looking for help with PR including a volunteer press officer and a social media volunteer.

Of course, none of this would be possible without funds and as we hopefully emerge from the restrictions, we are increasing and diversifying our scope. Building on the recent success of the Bedales/ RRN screening of Adnan funds, trustee Emily Mott is leading the charge, including an exciting new initiative in schools with children’s writer, Andrew Melrose, and an application for a grant from the Youth Action Fund in the South Downs National Park involving refugees and asylum-seeking youth. We are also reprising some old favourites, such as Syrian Suppers and the Walk for Hope in the autumn. First, we start with a new walk and another venture with Bedales – the Walk for Refugees on June 26th – we look forward to seeing you there.

Ian Bell on behalf of RRN Trustees

CEO’s Report

HousingThe Vulnerable Person Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) began again after being paused since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. The government has not yet announced when the new UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS) will commence. It had been planned to begin in April 2020 after the completion of the VPRS programme. https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/latest/news/refugee-council-says-the-government-announcement-on-the-resumption-of-resettlement-falls-short/
The RRN is now urgently seeking landlords with apartments or houses available in Hampshire so we can offer sanctuary to refugees and vulnerable children from Syria and other war-torn countries.

Almost all our properties are offered after landlords have heard someone talking about RRN, have read something in the press or have attended an RRN event. We’ve put together a few pointers to help enable this to continue.

How you can help us bring more people to safety in the UK?

Ask any landlord /friends and family who have more than one property if they would be willing to rent a property to a refugee couple or family at the local authority housing rates – refer them to our website or introduce them to us personally for further details.

Ask your local Parish, school or business magazine if they would consider including a short news article from RRN about the work we do (we can write this for you).

All welcome to contact us and find out about the package of support and funding that is available at hello@ruralrefugeenetwork.org

This would be highly beneficial and is much appreciated.

Community Team Volunteers and Education/Employment Programme

During the pandemic in 2020, the RRN supported 8 refugee families in Hampshire with dedicated virtual support from our fantastic teams of Community Volunteers. The volunteers continued to be present for all the families by keeping in touch, helping with virtual learning and supporting both adults and children with their English learning. The volunteers have been effective and creative by using WhatsApp and Zoom technology to ensure learning resources (including IT) are delivered to the families that require support. We also have a virtual women’s group. Further in the newsletter is an article from Mella one of RRN’s volunteers.

Calling any prospective employers with apprenticeships or work experience opportunities.

Furthermore, the RRN developed a bespoke pilot scheme – 121 virtual Education/Employment Programme fitting each learners’ needs through personalised learning. The Programme supports learners as they study new skills and gain knowledge for successful employment, overcome barriers which are preventing them accessing work, and become independently active in looking for employment and/or further training/work experience.

The pilot started with 3 men, followed soon after by 3 women from across Hampshire who took part between July 2020 and November 2020. The RRN is still supporting these learners (as and when) with a team of dedicated volunteers. All learners have either secured work experience or further study. The RRN has just started a third programme with 2 learners.

The programme is led by Hilary our qualified ESOL teacher who has a vast experience of working with refugees and is supported by RRN Community Team volunteers. The progress of each learner is reviewed by the team on a weekly basis. The team worked/liaised with JCP, Colleges and local employers to offer work experience and employment, and to source online training.

The RRN is working on developing and adapting from the learning of the above pilot programme to offer it face to face. It is hoped that this could be offered to 15 refugees in Hampshire, West Sussex and Portsmouth. The programme is aiming to start in Autumn 2021 (funding permitted).

Volunteering for RRN by Mella Gavanescu

I became a volunteer for RRN in October 2019. Due to lock-down rules, I have not been able to support families in person. However the RRN have done an amazing job of coming up with a new course of action which meant I was able to carry on being productive during these unprecedented times.

In June 2020 I joined the team involved in the Education and Employment pilot programme. I was able to offer one to one help on WhatsApp with conversational English and preparation for interviews and jobs.

After the positive results of the pilot programme that we offered for men, we came back together as a team to offer the same kind of help for women. Since then I have been offering help with learning English to a mother of two teenagers. At first we met up on WhatsApp but she was struggling as she said her phone was old and the sound wasn’t working well. RRN was able to offer her a tablet (generously donated by a volunteer) and now we have Zoom calls and it is a lot better.

My 17 year old daughter has been helping me produce some very nice and helpful PowerPoints and that is amazing.

Our team came to the realisation that the women were having trouble remembering the English knowledge they had accumulated prior to national lock-downs, therefore we set up a virtual women’s group. This is something the RRN used to offer this face to face prior to the lock-down.

We had our first session back in February and we’ve been meeting on Zoom on Monday afternoons ever since. It’s been very beneficial for the ladies to see each other and get to practice their English during our meetings. We usually choose a topic and talk about it during our following Zoom meeting. We’ve discussed cooking and shared favourite recipes, talked about the weather, holidays, school and education, shopping and many others.

It has been very rewarding to find that this has resulted in us being able to get to know each other better while at the same time giving us the opportunity to learn more about each other’s culture and traditions.

Volunteer PR Help needed.

We are looking for help with PR including a Volunteer Press Officer and a Social Media Volunteer.

The candidate/s would ideally have an understanding/experience of issues affecting refugees and asylum seekers.

If you are interested please email hello@ruralrefugeenetwork.org

Keeping RRN Engaged during Covid-19

RRN has continued to engage with stakeholders such as The University of Winchester and both Portsmouth and Chichester City of Sanctuary, South East Strategic Partnership for Migration, International Rescue Committee who has just launched a new programme RISE (Refugee Integration South East England) for resettled refugees living in West Sussex and Hampshire. The programme is free (EU funded) and open to any Arabic-speaking local resident with refugee status. They offer a 10 week online Cultural Orientation course (covering topics like housing, navigating the NHS, tax and benefits, etc), a Peer Mentoring programme, a Leadership course and Community Interpreter Training. For more info (or to volunteer as a speaker/place to visit on the Leadership course) contact RISE.UK@rescue-uk.org; interested refugees can message 07833 900831 / 07579551129. And of course we continue to work closely with Hampshire County Council and Two Saints.

Many of you will have seen our post on Facebook about the Government’s New Plan for Immigration: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/new-plan-for-immigration

We posted various links from organisations such as Refugee Council, Amnesty International and RESET to help with understanding this proposal/consultation.

The RRN signed a joint statement produced by Refugee Action in response to the Government’s consultation on the New Plan for Immigration which you can find here.

The RRN also responded to the consultation.

Nadia Potts
CEO

Fundraising Update

Thank you to everyone who attended the Bedales/ RRN screening of Adnan. We received excellent feedback about the film as well as the very engaging Q&A with the directors Steven Chatterton and Mark Arrigo along with cast members Rahgad and Ayham who deserve a lot of credit for creating and collaborating on such an impactful short film.

The event raised £4,128 in total for the RRN. Many thanks to Bedales for its valued support, the students and volunteers working and supporting the evening and especially to the Steven, Mark, Ayham and Rahgad.

We’re excited to announce that Bedales is hosting a summer walk as part of their annual Parents Day to raise funds for RRN. The walk, entitled Walk for Refugees, will take place on Saturday the 26th June, leaving from the Bedales car park at 9.00am, returning around 11.00am. A £10 donation and £20 for family will secure a map! RRN will be running a stall, selling refreshments and talking about our charity. Bedales has kindly agreed to allow walkers to have access to the Bedales Parents Open Day taking place on that Saturday. There will be publicity material with further details closer to the time and hopefully you will help spread the word!

We have just applied for a grant from the Youth Action Fund in the South Downs National Park involving refugees and asylum seeking youth aged 16-19. We’re planning an exciting pilot programmethat will combine art, technology and nature through a series of workshops and field studies from 2021-2022. Stay tuned for more details.

Now that we are returning to some kind of normal, we’re hopeful that we can resume our annual fundraising events and look forward to autumn 2021 when we will be holding our annual Walk for Hope as well as our Syrian Suppers. We also plan to launch an awareness raising campaign from September in local schools working with children’s writer Andrew Melrose who will be offering any interested volunteers a workshop on how to use his book The Boat as an educational tool forprimary children. Please let us know if you’d like to get involved with this.
If any of you have ideas on how to raise funds, we welcome your input!

East Hampshire community lottery is a weekly draw that raises money for good causes in the community. Tickets for the lottery cost just £1 per week with a top prize of £25,000 and lots of smaller value prizes every week. For every ticket, 60p goes to good causes, so when signing up you just choose RRN and that goes to us!

We’re on track to raise £754pa which is certainly very helpful during the fund drought which is COVID.

Please support us!

Go to https://www.easthantslottery.co.uk/ and follow the instructions to support Rural Refugee Network.

Emily Mott, Trustee
Kay Summersfield, Trustee

Finance Update

For obvious reasons, spending and fund-raising have been much reduced over the last year or so. However, our finances are in good shape thanks to the ongoing generosity of many kind individuals and organisations who continue to make donations. We did manage a good surge of donations from the screening of Adnan – almost £4,000 in total. So a huge thank you to all involved in that. The good news is that we still have sufficient reserves to keep us going and once new families start to arrive, we can look forward to more fund-raising opportunities.

We have a particularly generous donation from one individual which has helped us greatly in kick-starting the new Employment and Education initiative.

I have been interim treasurer for about nine months now and although I have managed to keep things afloat, we would be delighted to find someone who would take on the role on a permanent basis. The role involves keeping the books, making payments and general basic accounting so an accountant, or someone with book-keeping experience, would be ideal.

If you are interested in the role, would you please send an email to hello@ruralrefugeenetwork.org for a job specification.

Anthony Thistleton-Smith