Are you thinking about hosting or intending to host Ukrainians through the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship scheme? Are you unable to host but willing to volunteer your time to support Ukrainian refugees in Barnet in other ways? Barnet Citizens and the Barnet Refugee Welcome Board are ready to support you to join a borough-wide community response to welcome Ukrainians to Barnet.
OUR RECORD
We are an alliance of Civil Society institutions representing thousands of people who live, work and pray in Barnet. We build relationships across boundaries of faith, race and class and campaign on issues that matter to our members to make Barnet a better place. We campaigned to convince Barnet Council to resettle 50 Syrian refugees in Barnet and we supported the 15 families who arrived in a variety of ways including: holding a welcome party; providing ongoing ESL support; sourcing bikes for the children; arranging for Middlesex University to offer English language access courses and tuition waivers enabling 5 refugees to complete their degrees; holding a weekly coffee morning and toddler drop-in; finding employment. We have experience of providing direct support to newly arrived refugee families in Barnet.
HOW WE CAN HELP
We are ready to support you whether you are intending to host, thinking about hosting, or able to support Ukrainian refugees arriving in Barnet in other ways. Barnet Citizens has partnered with Citizens UK to identify hosts for 50 Ukrainian refugees in Barnet. Citizens has already received pledges for 500 places and expects to have 1,000 the end of the week. We think that Barnet can go a lot further than 50 – we think we can find room for at least 100 Ukrainians in Barnet. Citizens UK is working to ensure that the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship program is delivered in a way that is safe, sustainable, supported and at scale. We will support prospective hosts to think through the considerations and practicalities of hosting. We will help with the process of matching, application and planning for arrival. We will work with Citizens UK to provide safeguarding processes, training, resources, support structures, planning for what happens after the first six months and large-scale matching through partner organisations in Ukraine, Poland and Moldova. We will also co-ordinate a wider community response to engage the support and expertise of volunteers who are unable to host but have much to contribute in other ways. We will be building a local support network that will support hosts however they are matching with people to sponsor.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
If you would like to be part of a borough wide mutual aid group of hosts and volunteers building an active community of welcome in Barnet for Ukrainian refugees, please join us by completing the form below.
We are collecting this information now, but this scheme is only a week old and we don’t yet know exactly how matching will work so you may need to give some of this information again or we may need to ask for further information at a later stage.
This information will be collected and held by Finchley Progressive Synagogue and processed in accordance with our obligations under the Data Protection Act 2018. It will only be used for the purpose of supporting Ukrainians arriving in Barnet through the Homes for Ukraine program.
https://forms.gle/XQbpztxAYW3UgJVr5
We will be holding initial information sessions for prospective hosts and will contact you about them shortly.
Thank you!
Tamara Joseph,
Chair, Finchley Progressive Synagogue
Co-Chair, Barnet Citizens.
