Features / Bristol Charity Advent Calendar 2020
Bristol Charity Advent Calendar 2020, day 11: Bristol Refugee Rights
Starting in 2006 as Holding Refugees and Human Rights in Mind, Bristol Refugee Rights has gone from strength to strength over the past 14 years.
With the organisation’s Welcome Centre, a support service and social space for asylum seekers as well as new refugees, opening its doors in April 2006 at the Unitarian Church in St Paul’s, Bristol Refugee Rights has grown to offer an advice service, supporting young people aged 16 to 25, hosting a creche, delivering English classes and training courses and launching Pride Without Borders, a group for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees.
The charity, based at the Wellspring Settlement in Barton Hill, works to create “a society where refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are welcomed, feel safe, live free of poverty and are able to positively build their lives”.
is needed now More than ever
To build a world where “everyone’s rights and entitlements are respected”, Bristol Refugee Rights uses early action to prevent and de-escalate potential crises which could affect asylum seekers, empower supported individuals through information and confidence and advocate for a better and fairer society – one which welcomes refugees and asylum seekers with open arms.
Pride Without Borders, which supports LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers, is one of many Bristol Refugee Rights projects. Photo: Bristol Refugee Rights
With in-person services paused due to Covid-19, the charity is offering support via email, phone, text and WhatsApp and has launched extra support as a direct response to the ongoing pandemic.
Working with Bristol Hospitality Network, Refugee Women of Bristol, the British Red Cross and Borderlands, the charity are making individual grants to more than 300 asylum seeker, refugee and migrant individuals and families across Bristol, and have released information on seeking asylum during the pandemic in more than a dozen languages.
The charity works across the city. Photo: Bristol Refugee Rights
A hub for asylum seekers and refugees in Bristol, Bristol Refugee Rights has welcomed more than 3,000 people from more than 60 countries through its doors in the past 11 years.
Main photo: Sam Harvey
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