WHO ARE ACROSS BORDERS?
Across Borders is an organisation run by and for refugees and forcibly displaced migrants in the UK. 50% of our board, 100% of our volunteers and our two project coordinators have lived experience of forced migration and/or resettlement.
We believe that, when given the opportunity, refugees and those with lived experience of forced migration are extraordinary contributors, and community leaders within UK communities. Yet, refugees and migrants are often prevented from contributing to the UK by barriers to legal work and free and safe movement, by language barriers and by discrimination in healthcare and education. As a result integration into the UK can often be lonely, overwhelming and challenging for many refugee individuals and families.
WHAT IS THE REAL RESETTLEMENT PROJECT?
Our resettlement project focuses on building a positive experience of integration for refugees arriving in the UK who are resettled from Egypt and originally from Syria, Yemen,Sudan, Eritrea, South Sudan and Ethiopia.
We do this through:
- Training community mentors with lived experience in the UK: Our community mentors in the UK all speak the same language as new arrivals and have lived experience of settling in the UK. We train them extensively with our partners Voices in Refuge, to be mentors for people who are being resettled and to offer trauma-informed mentoring and guidance and community-led support. We aim for the training to also build the skills of our mentors to offer and support them with future opportunities in the UK. One of our mentors stated this year:
'I have supported many people in my community over the years but not professionally. This training has cemented my knowledge and provided detailed information that will be beneficial for the people I mentor but also for myself and my future career'
- Phone support to families before they come to the UK: Our trained Community mentors will provide pre-resettlement advice and support on education, culture in the UK, employment and provide psychosocial emotional support to families and individuals preparing to come to the UK. We work with our partner in Egypt, St Andrews Refugee Services (who provide legal, psychosocial and education support to refugees) to receive referrals and provide accurate support per- departure.
- Continued support to refugees once they arrive in the UK: Through our community mentors and community networks, when individuals and families arrive in the UK, our mentors will provide trauma-informed advice and support to those on arrival, alongside statutory services, linking them with community centres and signposting to relevant agencies in their areas that can support housing, welfare or health as well as with activities to support the psychosocial well-being for the whole family.
WHAT HAVE WE ACHIEVED SO FAR?:
In 2021 we piloted the project and our project coordinators Wafa and Abuzar have lead the project in achieving the following:
- Trained 9 community mentors who are working with individual mentees and their families in Cairo.
- We completed 12 hours of training sessions with our community mentors in safeguarding, trauma- informed psychosocial support, family reunion and rights in the UK, UK welfare and health system and interpretation skills.
- Worked with 36 refugee individuals and families who have been referred to our project so far and received bi-monthly calls from our community mentors.
WHAT SUPPORT WE NEED FROM YOU:
After a successful first year of our Real Resettlement project we now need further funds to continue. To do this we need to ensure our wonderful coordinators - Wafa and Abuzar can continue to be paid for their good work and also operational funds to cover phone call costs between the UK and Cairo.
Any donation is helpful, from £1, £2 or £10 or more. If you can make a regular donation this also will help with sustainability of our service but Please give what you can:
£5 - 10 will pay for one - two phone calls to a refugee family preparing for resettlement who cannot access free technologies due to disabilities or low resources
£25 will pay for a month of calls to a refugee family preparing to come to the UK, providing advice and support
£100 enables us to train one community mentor with lived experience. One community mentor will support up to 6 refugee individuals/families being resettled in one year.
No matter where you are on the scale, your donations will directly support people with experience of forced migration when they resettle to the UK as well as give our budding community mentors the opportunities to develop their skills!
OUR FUNDRAISING TARGETS:
We would like to make up to £5000 to help us cover our operational costs for the real resettlement project for a year. this includes phone calls costs and training for our mentors.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT! And for more info on our project please look at our website or social media: