The Laptops4Learning campaign is working! We expect around 1500 Ukrainian refugees in the Cambridge area, most of whom need phones and SIM cards, and many also laptops. In only a few short weeks, Laptops4Learning have already got their first laptops to some of those who need them. But we still...

Do you or your friends work for large businesses which upgrade their IT on a regular basis (ARM, Cambridge Assessment, Marshalls Aerospace, Addenbrookes, etc)? We are looking for contacts in Cambridge businesses to ask if they would let us have their old technology. This saves them having to dispose of...

You can now download (1.7 MB PDF file) our full annual report for the year to June 2021, browse it online at Issuu, or just read some of what we were up to below. We could not carry out our work without the tremendous contributions of our many volunteers and...

If you want to help Ukrainian refugees, please donate to aid groups such as Hope and Aid Direct or the International Red Cross. Please do not collect material aid unless you have personal connections with a group in the region which has requested this. Please also sign the petition asking...

We have compiled a list of ‘recommended’ agencies for people struggling to find Ukrainians to sponsor. We don’t know much about most of them, but hopefully this will be better resource than dodgy Facebook groups, which can be very unsafe for both parties. Please note that, while all these charities...

The UK Government has announced a scheme by which UK residents can sponsor Ukrainian refugees and provide a home. Details are sparse at best at this stage around important details like how sponsors will be vetted (guests will be traumatised women and children, so being a sponsor and host is...

After successful socials in September and October, we’ve sadly had to take the decision to pause these socials again because of changes in Covid safety in recent weeks. Indoor events are simply not safe, especially when we have so many elderly volunteers and can’t be sure of people’s vaccination status....

There are three Afghan families resettled in the Cambridge area so far, with another four expected before Christmas. They are being very well supported with friendship and donations of clothing and furniture by their local community, and visited regularly by CRRC volunteers. CRRC is working to ensure a smooth entry...

A doula is a birth attendant: a non-medical but trained person of support who can accompany the expectant mum to medical appointments and be a birth partner, if desired. They can explain and offer support to navigate the antenatal and postnatal system as it exists currently in Cambridge. This is...

The Refugee Council, Safe Passage, JCWI and others in the Together With Refugees Coalition organised a week of action from the 18th to the 24th of October. This included a rally outside the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday 20th and celebrations to welcome Good Chance Theatre Company’s giant puppet Little...

September saw our first refugee social for a year and a half. We were all excited to see everyone again, and both the September and October socials were very popular. To comply with the school’s new Covid precautions, these were held outside but the weather was fabulous on both occasions....

After the successful trip to Hunstanton at the end of July, the Activities Team booked an afternoon of ten-pin bowling at the Cambridge Leisure Centre, which proved very popular with some of the dads, able to showcase their bowling expertise for the children. The Coton Village Fair on Bank Holiday...

The talented teens in our beneficiary families continue to impress with their achievements. In September, Hawra and Ameera won a national teen business and social enterprise award to develop their idea of a website that provides peer-to-peer advice for young refugees like themselves. Inspired by the welcome they received in...

A public meeting was held yesterday between CRRC, Cambridge City Council and other charities and agencies, to provide information on the current situation regardingthe resettlement of Afghan refugees and volunteering opportunities. About this event This meeting was to introduce people who want to help refugees in the local area to...

The resettlement of refugees from Afghanistan is at an early stage. Afghans brought to the UK are initially being quarantined and accommodated in hotels until permanent accommodation can be found through local authorities. Work is starting to identify housing in our area that could be used to accommodate some of...

The new UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS) has finally been started after delays attributed to the pandemic. The first new family arrived in Cambridge at the beginning of August and, after completing quarantine, they are settling in and exploring their new home.

The Nationality and Borders Bill, which seeks to overhaul the asylum system, making it even more difficult for people to settle here, had its second reading at the end of July. Disappointingly, it passed by over 100 votes but the fight goes on. The Bill moves to the committee stage...

This month we welcomed a new member of our Board of Trustees. Many volunteers will already have met Marya, as she acts as a family focal point and, together with her husband Shwan, has been very active in supporting refugee families. Marya herself is a refugee from Kurdistan, who was...

The Bike Project, our partner charity in South London, delivered 26 refurbished bikes to the families on 5th August and a further 15 the following week. We are very grateful to Amanda (pictured, with Lavri and his new bike) for setting this up, also for driving an hour and a...

With a dynamic and efficient new activities team and funding from Cambridgeshire Community Foundation, the summer holiday programme got off to a successful start with a day trip to Hunstanton on 31 July. Two coaches left from the Backs at 9am with 70 family members and 8 volunteers. Leaving cloudy...

We were absolutely delighted to hear from Hend’s family that she had been awarded the 2021 Hunt-Hereward Trophy for courage and loyalty by Soham Village College. This is a wonderful achievement as only three annual cups are awarded by the school, which Hend joined three and a half years ago...

A side effect of the pandemic is that there are huge global supply problems. New bikes are very difficult to buy at the moment and, as a result, secondhand bikes have dramatically increased in price. However, Amanda, our Bike Project coordinator (on the left in the first picture, with Lavri...

CRRC trustees have been campaigning over the past month to encourage everyone who cares about refugees to take part in this Government’s public consultation on Priti Patel’s New Plan for Immigration. We held a joint webinar on 22 April with CamCRAG and SolidariTee (right: Alexa Netty, Executive Director of SolidariTee,...

Together With Refugees Today, we join a new coalition of more than 100 national, local, refugee-led and grassroots groups to launch Together With Refugees. We believe in showing compassion to people fleeing war, persecution or violence. Together, we are calling for a better approach to supporting refugees that is kinder,...

You can now read our full annual report for the year to June 2020 (1.6 MB PDF file). Here’s some of what we were up to. The emphasis of CRRC’s work, as envisaged and intended, focussed on developing ways to provide personal and professional development opportunities and employment support. English...

CRRC has provided some secondary school pupils with scientific calculators, and others with chrome book laptops and new and second hand phones. Further IT resources are being researched, purchased and distributed to help meet children’s educational needs and a volunteer able to provide appropriate training is being sought.  

The two new families who arrived on Family Reunion visas in October have been settling in well. The family support group, notably Amy and Vicky, have been very busy sourcing bikes, televisions, furniture, bedding and kitchen equipment. Thank you to all those who donated or offered items. Dan, Adrian and...

All the children taking the Kalamna Arabic classes will be moving up a grade this term. The more advanced learners are already tackling GCSE preparation grammar resources and learning to discuss topics such as family, jobs and food. The beginners have begun to be able to read and write short...

If lockdown has been hard in the UK, it has been far worse for displaced people living in temporary camps in Greece, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Living conditions are cramped and unhygienic at the best of times, with little access to clean water, power and medical facilities. On Lesvos, the...

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Synaptics, a ‘Silicon Fen’ chip-design company based on the Trinity Science Park, which has generously donated 25 newly cleaned computers for the refugee families to use. These were collected by our new IT coordinator, Paula. The Trustees would like to thank...

CRRC Trustees Sue Spencer, Dan Ellis and Catharine Walston were invited to introduce our workshop on refugees and resettlement to Year 10s at Comberton Village College in early December. Despite the time constraints, the workshop ran smoothly and the students engaged well with the subject. Best of all, the staff...

The Cambridge Must Act campaign, supported by CRRC and other local groups, met with a sympathetic audience at the Cambridge City Council meeting held on 22 October 2020. CRRC Trustee Adrian Matthews (bottom right in the photo) presented an e-petition signed by over 600 residents to the meeting, calling for...

Safe, legal routes to resettlement are needed to prevent people desperate to be reunited with friends and family taking sometimes fatal risks to reach the UK. This is why it is so important to campaign for the legal resettlement of refugees to be re-started. CRRC has found that this is...

The Well-being and Work for Refugees Integration Project was launched on 21 October with funds from the EU’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund. A preliminary consultative forum met online on 24 September, attended by representatives of CRRC, Cambridge Ethnic Community Forum, Cambridge Central Mosque, local health and mental health practitioners,...

Many thanks to all of you who signed our petition to Cambridge City Council asking for them to extend their existing refugee programme to welcome an extra 125 asylum seekers or refugees. Because this petition was successful, the City Council will now debate this request on the 22nd of October....

With children back at school and many places of work open, all of us are in contact with more people. We want you to be safe, well and able to enjoy others’ company in these difficult times, while taking actions that ensure that we don’t catch or spread the virus....

Many of CRRC’s beneficiary families are struggling to buy school uniform for the new school year as they try to support family members in camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Some are badly affected by the terrible explosion recently in Beirut: hearing that their loved ones have been injured, lost...

We have received a £5000 grant from the Cambridgeshire Community Foundation’s Warwick and Dominey Fund. This will support all our core activities, and so help provide English lessons for adult refugees, after-school activities for the refugee children, such as Code Club and Arabic classes, and holiday outings for entire refugee...

You can now read our full annual report for the year to June 2019 (2.8 MB PDF file). Here’s a taster of what we were up to: At the start of our campaign in 2015, CRRC persuaded Cambridge City Council to agree to settle a minimum of 50 individual refugees...

After a well deserved summer break, our Code Club resumed for more learning about computers, programming and technology. Most of the previous cohort were present and keen to continue their adventure, but we also had a few new joiners. Our focus for the first term was to discover the world...

Active Refugee Solidarity Panel Discussion at Kings College At the invitation of RE:action, the student refugee action group at the University of Cambridge, two CRRC volunteers shared a panel on 3 December with Steve Bedlam from Refugee Community Kitchen (RCK) to discuss their work with refugees in Northern France and...

South Cambridgeshire District Council has agreed to accept two new refugee families this spring, in addition to three families who arrived towards the end of last year. CRRC has been helping the three new families resettled in villages near to Cambridge with small adjustments to their new homes, accessing our...

Martial Arts Uniting Lives (MAUL) contacted CRRC in early January to offer free taekwondo sessions to the refugee families at Queen Edith’s Primary School. The classes are aimed at women and children, and take place twice per week. Two refugee families attended and thoroughly enjoyed the class. Thank you very...

CRRC were delighted to be consulted by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) via the Strategic Migration Partnership about the challenges that refugees can face in taking the driving theory test. The DVSA are also exploring ways to simplify the Highway Code and will improve the accessibility of the...

During the Christmas holidays Georgina and Layla organised two fantastic days out. The first was ice skating at the Cambridge North Pole on Parker’s Piece with around 9 families. This was such good fun and the children loved it! Some were a little hesitant at first, and some threw themselves...

CRRC is beginning to build an ‘employment’ volunteer network. Our refugee group comprises mostly of tradespeople, many of whom had been running their own small business, and our network of volunteers is exploring ways to help them back into their chosen work. This means getting to grips with standards of...

The Refugee Council launched an open letter to the Chancellor in early October on discovering that the UK Government had reneged on its pledge to continue funding to resettled refugees after Brexit. Currently, Government funding for services for resettled refugees comes through the EU’s Asylum, Migration and Immigration Fund (AMIF),...

CRRC recognises that all refugees have experienced considerable trauma and may continue to do so even once housed and set up in the UK. To address this, CRRC trustee and psychologist Ann Goodridge and Susan Mealing of the Refugee Council have designed a half-day workshop to help volunteers interpret what...

We have launched a new fundraising campaign to pay for driving lessons for any of our refugee friends who have passed their theory test. If you’d like to find out more, or to help us raise money to help, check out the dedicated campaign page.

The bike experts at OWL ran another bike maintenance workshop for our families on Monday 21st October. There were ten participants, three adults and seven children, all keen to learn how to keep their bikes working. One family brought four bikes, three of which were repaired and brought up to...

Two new families have arrived in Cambridge since September. One is a family of five, with three small children, the other is a family of four, with three teenagers. Both are being housed in South Cambridgeshire.

Ahmed, who is just starting university and is the eldest child of one of our beneficiary families, recently became the first member of any of Cambridge’s resettled refugee families to pass his UK driving test. Many congratulations, Ahmed! Several others have now sat and passed their theory tests, although the...

In March this year, Trustee Adrian Matthews launched a UK Government petition to reverse the decision to abolish language support for driving-test candidates. This was accompanied by a letter-writing campaign to local MPs. NE Cambs MP Lucy Frazer responded to her constituent’s letters by contacting the Minister for Transport, Jesse...

This might seem a bit late but, with the launch of this new website in mid-2019, we can more easily release our annual reports and other news. So, you can now read our full annual report for the year to June 2018 (2.8 MB PDF file). Here’s a taster of...

The International Organisation for Migration is the UN’s agency charged with helping refugees who have been approved for resettlement with cultural adjustment before they are flown to their new homes. In a workshop evening session on 21 February, IOM trainers Meredith and Ahmed explained how little time they were given...

The Communications team are delighted to be joined by Kay, who will be taking over the CRRC Twitter feed management from Sarah. She is keen to encourage any CRRC volunteers to send her any news items, campaigns, images or events you would like shared. You can contact her here. Members...

A key plank of Theresa May’s Hostile Environment immigration policy, the Right to Rent scheme, was declared unlawful in a ruling handed down by Mr Justice Spencer at the High Court in early March. He said: It is my view that the Scheme introduced by the Government does not merely...

On 14 April, CRRC co-hosted a talk at the University Centre by Abdulazez Dukhan, a young Syrian refugee committed to telling the refugee story ‘through refugee eyes’. This was part of a UK-wide speaking tour arranged by Safe Passage for Abdulazez, and was attended by almost 100 people. He was...

CRRC’s Trustees have been out and about raising awareness of refugee issues around the area. Sue, Adrian and Dan gave an illustrated talk at Comberton Village College in February, which was so well received that they have been invited to Shelford Library to give the same talk on 26 June....

The fourth annual Ahbab Festival took place on the 15th, 16th and 17th February at Cambridge Junction, celebrating Middle Eastern and North African culture. The Festival brought together an array of musical performances including the Baladi Blues Ensemble, the Ayoub Sisters and Amira Kheir, as well as screenings of the...

CRRC’s campaign to persuade the Government to reinstate language support for the driving test has seen a flurry of activity over the past two months. Our petition hit its first major milestone in March when signatures topped the 1000 mark. It has now garnered over 2000 signatures, many more than...

The start of the Easter holidays saw a large group of about 40 spend a fascinating (if slightly scary!) day on 8 April visiting the Sedgwick Museum on the Downing site. The children were given worksheets and activities and had a wonderful time getting to know the dinosaurs and fossils...