London Refugee Response - New fund announced, and next steps from London Funders

Over the past few weeks we have been working with our members to see how best we can support London’s Afghan communities. Our city has always been home to a significant proportion of the country’s Afghan population (of the 250,000 people in the UK of Afghan origin, 60% live in Greater London), and London is set to welcome even more refugees in the upcoming months.

Working together

London’s funders are already looking at coordinating work, so that grants can reach the civil society organisations responding to the current crisis, and who have the trust of the communities they are working with.  London Funders is supporting this through enabling the sharing of insights and intelligence, and bringing funders together to look at common approaches so that we can collectively reduce the burden on organisations delivering such vital work.  If you’re a funder working in this space please do get in touch to make sure we’re involving you in these conversations.

London Refugee Response

Alongside work with our members to align a funding response, today – supported by the Mayor of London, London Councils and leaders across our city - the London Community Foundation has launched an appeal to give Londoners a way to provide much needed support to new arrivals from Afghanistan (and potentially refugees from other countries living in London).

The London Community Foundation will be working alongside other funders to ensure that donations from the public can further enhance the collaborative approach in London.  This important partnership will help to ensure that resources can reach groups best-placed to support our communities, and for this to be as straightforward as possible.

What else?

We’re also pulling together the research and resources our members have shared with us as part of an insight hub on the London Funders website. If you spot anything that you think is useful, please do send a link over to Geraldine T. In addition we're hosting a series of meetings on how funders can support short-term needs, medium/long term needs and policy/advocacy work. If you are a funder and would like to come along to any of these, do get in touch with Grace.

Thank you

Many thanks to the funders working with us on this response, and we have been so pleased to see that there has been such an open approach to sharing and working together on this, so that we get support to communities effectively.

You can also help by spreading the word about the London Community Foundation appeal – Londoners have been incredibly generous in donating clothes and other items, but there is also a definite need for increased cash donations for organisations.