A place of sanctuary

Tim Gee writes about making your Meeting a place of sanctuary

Building on a heritage of welcoming newcomers to Britain, and a conviction there is that of God in every person, Quakers across Britain are working to welcome people seeking sanctuary. This includes hosting people at home, providing legal support, volunteering in Calais and Dunkirk, local campaigning, providing English lessons, visiting detention centres, providing holidays, and holding anti-racism events. Many Friends serve community projects as individuals or through work. Some Meeting houses are hubs for welcome projects hosted by the Meeting as a whole.

Earlier this year, Tilly Goodwin and I – we’re both Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) staff members – engaged on a twelve-stop ‘listening and threshing tour’ of Meetings across Britain to find out more about what is happening, and to explore the options for a national project. Here are four of the stories we heard.

Jo, Tottenham Meeting

‘A group of us have been meeting in the garden at the Quaker Meeting House in Tottenham for about a year now. We’ve called this project the Mulberry Tree Community Garden, named after the famous mulberry tree in the burial ground here. We are a mixture of people from all walks of life, and all of the volunteers have precarious living situations in one way or another. We come together to spend time outside and grow a few vegetables. There’s a couple from Kosovo that come every week. They used to live pretty much entirely off the land before they came here, and being able to garden makes them feel closer to that way of life.

‘The immigration system in the UK is pretty hostile and dehumanising. Many of the people I come into contact with struggle with accessing basic necessities, such as food and housing. Some of them now live with me at Martha House in Tottenham, which offers accommodation for destitute migrants, and others are able to take vegetables from the garden here at Tottenham Meeting. This also gives people something to do, and creates opportunities for forming new friendships.’

Maria, Llangollen Meeting

‘A year and a half ago, a group of Friends, friends and friends of friends from around Llangollen, North Wales, got together to work out what we could do to support people fleeing from their homes.

‘A news item brought our attention to a Syrian family who had recently arrived in Wales as refugees and tragically become separated from their baby in the process. I phoned the news reporter to offer financial help to sort out the visa problem that was preventing the baby from being reunited with his family. In the course of the conversation, I said, “You’ve probably had loads of calls from people like me” and she said, “No, we’ve had lots of ‘I see they have an iPhone’ comments. Nothing positive.”

‘This was three weeks before Christmas, so I asked the reporter to pass an invitation on to the family to spend Christmas with us in our home. They accepted the invitation, and the group rallied round in support.

‘At the beginning of February the baby was brought to the UK and reunited with his family. Already we felt we were good friends, and it was wonderful to share in our friends’ joy. We don’t speak Arabic, and our Syrian friends are not yet fluent in English, but this has not prevented us from becoming close friends. Since then we have kept in close contact with the family, helping with all sorts of things that can feel incomprehensible when one doesn’t understand how a new culture works.

‘As a group we are now working towards having two families settled in Llangollen under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme.’

Mo, Karo and Elizabeth, Lancaster Meeting

‘We campaigned with others for Lancaster to become a City of Sanctuary for people escaping their home countries.

‘When people started arriving we made a pack where people could put their Home Office papers along with maps of the city and little red dots, showing where people were living and where the English lessons were as well as a map of the UK to show how we were linked.

‘Then we started talking about English classes. There were three nationalities at that time and three teachers who gave their time for free and the Meeting house provided the space. That has run for more than a year and continues. This year it has been taken over by a local college. It was an act of faith and within a year it is official and it’s funded.

‘The leadership has come from groups across the city. Not all of us in Lancaster Quakers go to all the meetings. Some of us uphold the work of others in our hearts. Some people have refugees to stay in their houses. Some of us volunteer our time doing the washing up.

‘We are just a bunch of ordinary people, organised into a City of Sanctuary group. But how things have come together does feel like a miracle. There are lots of people doing things right across the city now.

‘Ultimately welcoming newcomers who have fled their country can be like being very closely and intimately involved in the lives of other members of our family. That is how the encounter feels.’

Christine, Swindon Meeting

‘Swindon Meeting has for many years had a close association with a project in the town providing a drop-in venue for displaced people. The Harbour Project has grown as the need for help has increased, and Friends have acted as trustees and volunteers, and informally befriended individuals where a connection has been made.

‘A year ago Swindon Quakers developed the connection further by inviting refugees to a Saturday afternoon in a member’s home, for tea and conversation. The idea was born from an established programme of monthly teas for isolated elderly people, which takes place in cities in the UK (not a Quaker initiative) and has been running for many years. We felt that refugees and asylum seekers rarely have the opportunity to visit a home, and that by inviting them collectively to our homes we created an opportunity for conversations and greater understanding – not to mention the chance for Quaker bakers to indulge their love of cake-making!

‘The event has become a regular monthly gathering enjoyed by all. Numbers have increased to the extent that it is no longer possible to host in our own homes, so we host in the Meeting house, offering transport for families and people who live too far from the centre. The children are catered for with things to do, and the conversations flow over food. This is very easy to organise and we are fortunate to have an easily identifiable source of visitors in Swindon, which is a dispersal town.

‘It is a very simple way to extend the hand of friendship, understanding and support. It can make such a difference.’

What can my Meeting do?

Formally launching at Yearly Meeting Gathering in August, your Local Meeting is invited to become a ‘Sanctuary Meeting’.

Working with experienced Friends and allies across the UK, BYM is developing a package of training sessions, publicity materials and networking assistance to support every Meeting that wants to, to build friendships and alliances in their community, to dismantle ‘borders’, to participation in Quaker community action, and to work together for UK-wide political change.

Tim is BYM forced migration programme developer.

More information: www.quaker.org.uk/migration

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