Didn’t the same God who made me, make them? (Job 31:15 – The Message) It was welcome news to many British Citizens and their families when, last week, the Foreign Office announced a deal with the airline industry to bring home thousands of stranded tourists struggling to get home because of …
Welcoming Environment
Nine years of war in Syria – a call to pray
This weekend marks the ninth anniversary of the civil war in Syria. While Europe worries about a new wave of refugees, the humanitarian crisis around the city of Idlib goes largely unreported. Many came to Idlib from other parts of Syria when the area was relatively safe. Now shells and …
Week Four: Room for All
The Beginning "They couldn’t believe what they had seen. Nothing ever happened to them – their life was just the hillside, sheep and more sheep. But today! Today they had seen a miracle. In all their days counting sheep, the Shepherds had never imagined that they might feel the way they had …
Week Two: The Outsiders
Lina's Story "At nine months pregnant, when she should have been picking out her baby’s first outfit, Lina received a letter from the Home Office stating that she would be evicted from her accommodation. “When I looked at the date of the letter, it was dated 27 April. On my due date”, she …
Refugee Week – More than Welcome
What’s your idea of Heaven? A feast? A place where people of many languages live in harmony? Where tears are wiped away? Where problems fade and disappear? A place of welcome, peace and joy? Today I visited the Avenue Multicultural Centre (AMC) in Southampton, a weekly event for asylum …
Sanctuary Sunday
17–23 June is Refugee Week, and churches are encouraged to mark Sanctuary Sunday on 23 June. In a guest blog, Revd Inderjit Bhogal argues that welcoming outsiders should be core to Christian discipleship “In a world of hostility there is a counter-cultural gospel summons to practice …
Why work should be part of welcome
Over the last six weeks, our series of blogs have been exploring what it means to offer a welcoming environment to refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants. Today, Simeon Mitchell argues that giving people seeking asylum the right to work should be part of offering a proper welcome to those …
The Power of Seeing People Complexly: reflections after visiting Calais
In the latest blog in our series on creating a welcoming environment, Bethan writes about her experience of spending a week in Calais with a group from St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, working with the organisations Help Refugees and Refugee Community Kitchen. In recent weeks, …
Rain no barrier to integration of New Scots
In the latest blog about creating a welcoming environment, Sabine Chalmers of Scottish Faiths Action for Refugees writes about the Edinburgh Weekend Club, a regular social integration event for refugees. It was a horrible morning – cold and pouring with rain – and my mind was spinning. We …
Welcoming all: a view from Malta
Having spent years talking about and visiting foodbanks, I didn’t imagine that the first time I would work in one it would be in Valletta, the capital city of Malta. Malta is a popular holiday destination for many British people. But its place in the middle of the Mediterranean means that it has …