Catching up with our Director

Severn Trent Community Fund

We wanted to share this video and below is the transcript from the video.

Hi, My name is Adam Baker and I am the charity director at Refugee Roots. We work with asylum seekers and refugees to provide a place to belong. We do that through a range of empowerment initiatives and support activities, primarily through befriending and volunteers who get alongside asylum seekers and refugees and will be with them throughout their journey. 

Severn Trent Community Fund has enabled us to do that through the ‘A place to Belong’ project which has entailed so many different things, from one to one befrienders that have been able to meet up at times, in person, and at times remotely, to accompany people to appointments they were nervous about or that they would have struggled to make it there by themselves, to groups like those that are meeting today. I’m at an allotment here in Nottingham today, Windmill Community Gardens where we are running some wellbeing workshops with some asylum seekers and refugees in a socially-distanced way. When we received the funding we didn’t know what was ahead of us, the year that was about to unfold and we have appreciated the flexibility and the real genuine interest and support we have received from the Community Fund. 

It’s really been my privilege to be part of all of the different aspects of support refugee roots provide to asylum seekers and refugees through its volunteers. We saw a massive increase to the befriending project at the start of the lockdown when people maybe were furloughed or looking for things to do to contribute to their community and we went from having what was an average of 40 or 50 volunteers to 70 or 80 volunteers and almost half of those were involved in one to one befriending. 

The relationship we have had with Severn Trent Community Fund this past year has been an incredible support. Thank you once again. 

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