Tyl’s Giveback Community Fund is proud to support the Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants, which performs a vital role in supporting people who’ve lived through unimaginable trauma gain a foothold in the UK.
Leaving your country because of war, persecution or incarceration takes real grit, determination and courage. But for many people, arriving in London only marks the beginning of a long journey towards settled status and a decent life.
The Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants welcomes refugees and migrants who have been displaced from their countries of origin wherever they have come from and whatever has happened in their lives. Most people it works with are homeless – either sofa surfing, sleeping in hostels or on the streets.
Its mission is to offer the people who come to it the emotional support, practical tools and sense of community they need to build a decent, happy life in the UK, and to feel welcomed and valued as a human being in the process.
Helping Maja
Maja (not her real name) is an asylum seeker from Syria. She first came to the Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants because she was staying in accommodation where she felt threatened by her host, and her only other option was to sleep rough on the streets. Because Maja is deaf, the charity’s workers communicated with her using Google Translate.
As with so many of the people who approach the charity, Maja’s most urgent need was to find safe accommodation. Once it had found a place for her with a family that hosts refugees and helped her to move her things there, it encouraged her to get involved in its community activities and make full use of the services it provides.
The good news is that Maja is now a regular at the charity’s centre, where she often enjoys a hot lunch and activities including dancing and a makeup workshop. It’s also a safe space for her to relax and use the charity’s support service, which is helping her access healthcare, find a solicitor, sign up for a British Sign Language course and much more.
Help when it’s needed most
The cost of living crisis has resulted in a big drop in the donations that the charity is receiving, but there’s been no such fall in demand for the vital services it provides. We’re just glad that our donation is helping the charity provide much-needed help to Maja and the 180 other refugees and asylum seekers that are currently on its books.
More about Giveback
The Giveback Community Fund is at the heart of our business here at Tyl: with every card transaction our customers take, we donate a portion to the Giveback Community Fund, to support good causes. So, the more successful our Tyl customers are, the bigger the Tyl Giveback Community Fund grows, the bigger the impact we can have in our customers’ local communities – it’s a win-win-win situation.
We hope to bring more and more charities into the Giveback fold as time goes on. Watch this space.