Acton 16th December 2024
Dear EASE friends,
Our third EASE Christmas party is almost upon us, so we wanted to thank you for your support this year for those in our community who are refugees or seeking asylum, to report back on what we’ve been doing – and ask for your continuing support in 2025.
The year started with panic amongst our members over the cruel 7-day eviction notice period from asylum accommodation, for those given leave to remain. It ends with the positive news that new refugees will now have a 56-day statutory eviction period – though that has yet to come into effect.
As we are entirely volunteer run, so much thanks is due to the many who make our drop-in possible. Much of this is best said via quotes that we have received this year from our members (below).
“Kind and friendly people who work and help us. They are so supportive and thoughtful. I’m so lucky to know them.” First and foremost, our thanks to our volunteers – who are the heartbeat of EASE – for a whopping (over) 6900 hours of their time this year, tirelessly ensuring that the hub runs smoothly every week. Our forty-two regular volunteers have become an ever more tightly knit group of friends, with a common goal: “The drop-in has given me the opportunity to help people in our society that I care about greatly” said one volunteer. It’s inspiring and fun to work with you all each week. Thank you so very much, to each and every one of you.
Thank you to the 2023/24 Mayor of Ealing, Cllr Hitesh Tailor, for all his work to profile and fundraise for us as one of his chosen charities during his Mayoral year. It has been a great pleasure working with Hitesh. The funding is so much appreciated as has been his moral support and the new connections and friends he brought us across the borough.
Thank you to our funders including the philanthropic Freshwater Foundation and Clarks Foundation and those funders who wish to remain anonymous. We are fortunate to have a multi-year grant from EHCVS and thank you particularly to the many individual donors from the local community. We are especially grateful to the excellent professional support from Weil’s ensuring that we abide by our legal commitments to the Charity Commission. We are dependent upon the numerous charities and organisations that supply our drop-ins in kind: grocery donations from City Harvest and The Felix Project; toiletries, sundries and new clothes from Goods4Good; period products from Bloody Good Period; delicious locally cooked biryani funded by West London Islamic Centre and vital storage offered by Big Yellow. Then there are superb small local businesses that support us including Chicken Spot, Sanabel Bakery and Kall Kwik Ealing: thank you for being so friendly, responsive and generous.
Communications can be a lifeline for our members which we have been able to support. Thanks to much-valued SIM cards from Vodaphone (almost 300 distributed in 6 months). One gentleman, blinded and cruelly burnt and traumatised by his past, was almost shedding tears of gratitude the last time he journeyed from the other side of the borough to collect a SIM card from us. Nearly 100 laptops were generously relayed to us from an anonymous donor by Simon Oatley of Film Workshop. Combined with a grant from Acton Charities to purchase chargers, these were distributed to our members throughout this year. This was only possible due to local IT academic Nashab, volunteering countless hours to refurbish all of the laptops and who’s now designing our website.
We are grateful for important partnerships with Ealing Council and many local organisations, which help us become a hub for information and referrals for Ealing’s refugee community. We have had members train as community translators with REAP, tickets for Acton’s ActOne cinema, entry to cultural nights at RichMix. We have made referrals to many charities and organisations including support to new mothers, youth mentoring and professional requalification. We are immensely grateful to be able to call on local immigration barrister Julian Norman from Goldsmith Chambers for vital pro bono support to our members. Thank you too, to Joanne and Leila at West London Welcome, for their ongoing listening ear and advice. More than a dozen concerned council teams are in touch with us, from Ealing libraries to the Cost of Living team, demonstrating their commitment to being a borough where people can seek sanctuary. We were delighted that Ealing CEO, Tony Clements visited earlier this year and for a chance to present our work to Ealing Council as part of Ealing’s Refugee Week activities. Carlos and his Rough Sleeping team have given us a vital referral pathway for our homeless members; we are so glad for the ongoing relationship with Carol Sam and her dedicated and ever supportive and positive Equalities team, in particular. We also thank all the councillors that have taken time to visit us this year: Cllrs Hitesh, Blerina, Kate, Stephen and new GLA member Bassam Mahfouz, too. We look forward to working with you all in 2025.
“If you have no activity no voluntary not going to meet people in the hotel. Everyone minds their own business in the hostel.” Our hub offers a social space plus practical support. Each week the activities on offer include an art table, children’s activities, knitting and crocheting, our local barber and most importantly, time to come together, chat and break bread with friends. The termly jumble ‘sale’ offers clothes and housing items, requiring impressive logistical skills (and time) from our volunteers and is so appreciated. Our multi-level English classes are one of the best-loved (and most important) offers from EASE, thanks to an absolutely stellar teaching team. We had over 60 students this term, including one who came to us with no English in May 2023 and is about to sit his Functional Skills level 2, equivalent to English GCSE. Our information desk is in growing demand, with four volunteers offering information and referrals to local services to around 15 people each week: referrals for help with accommodation and job schemes, registering for school, applying for Freedom passes, bank accounts, universal credit, the new e-visa and more. Volunteers at the help desk listen to experiences of life as a refugee or asylum seeker in Ealing and it is a particularly challenging and emotionally difficult part of EASE. Magnificent lunches – regularly over 100 covers – unite us in the universal culture of sharing a meal together and are a highlight for everyone. The washing up isn’t.
“When I come here I feel own family. Loving caring safe. Softness and our needness especially English cla[s]ses. Good food and good friendly environment.” Highlights this year have included:
- Replacing the bag of basic food items we used to offer at the drop-in, with an equivalent-value £5 Tesco card. This provides a little more choice and dignity, in line with the universal evidence of the benefits of giving support in cash, not in kind.
- Partnering with Ealing Council’s Equalities team in a refugee ‘fayre’ to help inform those with asylum or refugee status in Ealing about local services. This was a vital and rare opportunity for this cohort to meet council staff face-to-face.
- Forging partnerships with local students. We were chosen by BA marketing students at UWL for their branding project and were blown away by their creativity. We are grateful for all their ideas and market research on our name and excited to work with Kristin going forward on this. On the research side, LSE MA students in International Development, Anna and Laura, have launched our first needs assessment to ensure we are offering the support and services our members want.
“I want to meet and laugh with English people and I want to learn how to live like English people – to know the culture of the area…I live here now so it is my responsibility to learn about English culture.” This is what has taken place at EASE in 2024, thanks to your support:
- 36 term-time drop-ins, including two jumble free ‘sales’ for new and used clothes, suitcases and other desirable items and a Christmas party.
- 3424 visits from 770 asylum seekers and refugees across the borough. This spans 72 nationalities, including our first Palestinian and Lebanese members – we’re never far from world events.
- We served over 4370 lunches (that’s 525kg of the best roast potatoes in west London)!
- Termly training sessions for volunteers: in the autumn we offered first aid training and the first of 2025 will be on navigating the emotional impact of volunteering in a refugee community and looking after ourselves and each other.
The turnover of members has been much faster recently, with people moving through the borough more quickly and new people coming to us – over 40 apply to us each month. We’d like to keep up with their needs. People tend to stop visiting once they’ve found jobs and study: one former member runs a stall at the market on The Mount in Acton, another is now a project manager for the British Museum, an anaesthetist has just requalified to practice in the UK, and others are working part time in hotels, laundries and food delivery companies, while studying.
On the horizon for 2025 are plans to boost our social and service offer as Ealing’s hub for refugees and asylum seekers in the borough and to become a properly participatory organisation. On the social side, we hope to improve the activities we offer, with a sewing club, a choir and local trips. On the service side, we want EASE to be the go-to point for access to services, including more neo-natal support, access to employment and voluntary opportunities, and we really want to be a much-needed meeting place to access council services. We are designing our website as a launch pad for our members to find helpful online resources and information. We urgently need caseworkers to guide people through the daunting accommodation-employment-financial processes….Let’s see if our members agree with these ideas, following the LSE survey. Our name will also change, to avoid confusion with a couple of other organisations named ‘EASE’ in the borough.
EASE offers the only support in the borough that is exclusively for refugees and asylum-seekers, so if you are able, here are some ways you can keep this going in 2025: We are always looking for new regular volunteers on Thursday mornings or behind the scenes. Please sign- up here if you are interested. And of course, funding. Given we must hire some paid staff to manage this operation, our funding needs will dramatically increase beyond our current £800 per week. Do please consider a monthly contribution (link here) however small, to help support us regularly, or consider donations to EASE as an eco-alternative to Christmas cards and presents!
Those living in our borough who are seeking asylum or are refugees are too often invisible but have so much to give back, with just a bit of support. Your solidarity is so welcomed and much needed.
We’ll leave you with this: “Today is Thursday and this is very beautiful day. And I am feeling good emotional. And I am very enjoy in this day. This day is interesting day. This day British help for asylum seeker.”
Thank you for reading this far. All season’s greetings and hoping for peace for everyone in 2025,
from the EASE trustees.