Het Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers is voor velen van u bekend omdat we dit doel al ruim 25 jaar steunen in onze ‘buren buurt’ Southwark.
Hieronder een stukje van Pauline Nandoo de director:
In 1995, a local campaign by the people of Southwark began to broaden public understanding of the root causes and needs of destitute asylum seekers. From this early grassroots movement, SDCAS was born. Twenty-five years after its founding, we are now a cornerstone charity that continues to grow, sustaining and developing services for asylum seekers, refugees and migrants.
Every week our centres support hundreds of people. The need hasn’t gone away. People still rough sleep and struggle with difficult immigration and integration issues as the environment remains unforgiving with the introduction of the Illegal Migration Act.
However, it’s our fundamental job to provide a warm welcome for people fleeing persecution. This year has seen a return to business as usual. We remain a relatively small charity. The cost-of-living crisis has hit us hard, but we continue to try to balance our resources against the costs of an increased service provision.
We found new premises to enable services to resume in the north of the borough at the South London Mission, as well as at the Trinity College Centre, Camberwell, and a new centre in Borough.
In the meantime, we developed plans to build a stronger infrastructure to support frontline services, and to increase roles within SDCAS for beneficiaries, so-called ‘experts by experience’, to harness the wealth of knowledge our clients share.
SDCAS’ achievements would not be possible without the friendship, support and donations of The Dutch Church.
U kunt meer lezen op de website van deze organisatie: www.sdcas.org.uk/
Namens de diaconie, Saskia Verweij