Wellbeing Projects for Asylum Seekers and Refugees - Community Cafe
14
+
years since we opened our doors ❤️
In March 2024 we opened a weekly evening Wellbeing Cafe in Lancaster as an early intervention initiative for asylum seekers and refugees. Our work with trauma survivors is primarily about resourcing people – first and foremost offering opportunities for connection, for belonging, for friendship, for being seen and witnessed, for love and dignity. It’s also about offering agency, our language is invitational, everything is about exercising choice which is often taken away from asylum seekers.
All our staff and volunteers have received training in our approach to trauma-informed care and we’re very mindful of the space we host.
Aim of the sessions
The aim of the sessions is to offer a space of love and refuge, a space to build relations of trust, to practice and rehearse a sense of safety (which has a deep impact on regulating the nervous system). Every single person is personally welcomed by our host into the space and no one leaves without some connection with either staff, volunteers and other attendees.
What happens at the cafe
We have lots of different kinds of games (which helps overcome language barriers), we play uplifting music or music from different countries, sometimes there’s dancing. The primary focus of the session is to have a relaxed space where asylum seekers and refugees can come and socialise with their friends or on their own rather than sit in their rooms alone. We ask people why they come back and the response is that it’s the only place where they can come as themselves, not as an asylum seeker looking for help. They say it’s like coming home. They say it’s their safe space. They say we’re family.
Families eat together so we offer nourishing food cooked and prepared by a staff member and volunteers.
We collect food from Eggcup when we can (a food waste project in Lancaster that distributes food otherwise going to landfill) for our cooking, and also every week offer bread, and fresh fruit and vegetables to asylum seekers and refugees to take away.
A new initiative at the Cafe is the addition of a volunteer Artist, Jane Timshle, who has brought incredible opportunities for creative expression and mindful practice.
Who attends these sessions
We have asylum seekers and refugees attend these sessions – we have had people from Mali, Senegal, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Namibia, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Palestine, Turkey and El Salvador.
Some of the people who attend work during the day, so they cannot access any of the other drop ins offering food, or opportunities to socialise.
We are grateful for financial support from the Community Health Champions Fund, Pots of Possibility Fund, Lancaster City Council Local Integration Fund and Lancaster District CVS Community Fund. All our staff currently volunteer their time.
With grateful thanks for all our volunteers without whose love and dedication these sessions would not happen: Sharon Homer (session host), Fariha Blockley, Hazel Rhodes, Pirooz Kashefi Attwood, Sam Bear, Jitei White, Mel Baxter, Carol Ostermeyer, Kathryn McDonald, Laura van Tatehove, and Dorothea Williamson.