We have the core belief that we can help a refugee family to resettle in Brislington.

Brislington Welcome is a community sponsorship group which has been created in accordance with, and as a part of, a government scheme to give ordinary people the power to directly resettle refugee families to their community.

We are working with the Pickwell Foundation to help us settle a refugee family in our local community of Brislington. We will support the family from the moment they step off the plane, through their journey of resettlement as they stand on their own two feet - helping them to access local services, navigate their neighbourhood, learn English, find work, and build social connections.

We’re a group of neighbours from in and around Brislington (who mostly haven’t met before), who responded to a Facebook post to volunteer our support and involvement in this group. We’re passionate about this cause, we want to make a difference, but other than that we don’t have direct experience or qualifications to do this. We’re learning as we go and have access to a huge amount of support and help from other community sponsorship groups and the Pickwell Foundation.

 To meet the requirements of setting up a community sponsorship group from scratch, we had to form a ‘Core Group’ early on and share out the critical responsibilities. However, the wider group is growing by the day and has been doing so since day one back in September when the first Facebook post went out to gauge interest. The way we see it, the more people on board with this in Brislington, the more welcoming we will be as a community to our refugee family.

The quick answer is in any way you feel you can! As the project continues the work will continue to grow and spread out in a number of different directions. Some volunteers have offered to help fundraise, others have offered to help with things like settling at school or showing the new family how to sign up to a GP surgery. In addition, there are other tasks like preparing the Home Office application and interpreting. In short, there is plenty to get involved in! It would help us if you could complete this Volunteer Interest Form so that we can make a note of your contact details and areas of interest in the group.