By Fran Wood | CEO
Our Darlington community were just as generous this year and we were overwhelmed again by their support.
Carmel College School made 54 beautiful hampers for some of our most vulnerable asylum seekers. Reid Street Primary School collected boxes of donations to go towards our 270 Gift bags. We were helped by generous donations from some of our amazing supporter.
The fundraising team spent a day at Clarey's house sorting donations, buying gifts and packing gift bags which were taken to our drop in and distributed to our clients with the help of children from Reid Street Primary School. Our Mentors collected the wonderful hampers from Carmel College.
It was good to end the year on a positive note. This summer we saw how quickly misinformation becomes a weapon to attack innocent vulnerable people. Although the situation in nearby Middlesbrough was terrifying for migrants, the mosque in Darlington was under threat by some mindless people. Fortunately, there were more of us (from all faiths and none) supporting the mosque. Standing alongside our incredible asylum seekers we could see how hard they found the general unrest and this increased their anxiety levels.
Our Sewing project is going great guns with more donated machines and a much needed Christmas donation from Ward Hadaway Solicitors. We have been able to service our existing machines, buy 2 more and buy material to make cushion covers and more bunting.
The Cooking project has been exploring all the cultural food our asylum seekers teach us - Georgian, Albanian, Somalian, Iranian, Kurdish, Syrian, Nigerian. We are hoping to expand our knowledge and taste buds. Unfortunately, we have had to move from the venue we started in because they were unable to accommodate any storage for our sewing or cooking groups. This had an impact on our volunteers who had to store equipment at home and then bring it to the sessions - some of us were beginning to suffer from bad backs. The new place has some limited storage but there are many more drawbacks around parking and access. How good it would be to have everything in one place!
This year we have recorded over 5,600 volunteer hours from our 45 active volunteers who have supported 373 asylum seekers and refugees.
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