A report of the initial meeting of Leicester City of Sanctuary

The meeting was attended by over sixty people including: many individuals including some with personal experience of the asylum system; members of voluntary organisations, refugee community organisations, and faith groups from Leicester and beyond; and staff from various organisations from across the Midlands, the police, various departments of the local authority, and the office of a local MP. In addition, messages of interest and support had been received from many others who were unable to attend including: various City Councillors, and the three local MP’s – Keith Vaz, Patricia Hewitt and Peter Soulsby.

The agenda included: presentations from the co-ordinator of City of Sanctuary in Sheffield, and from project workers from Refugee Action and the British Red Cross; followed by discussions to explore ideas for donations / fundraising, opportunities for hands-on support, and ways to raise awareness / tackle negative media, which led to a very positive feedback and questions session.

Lunch gave an opportunity to chat and network, and generated donations of £55.18 towards food parcels for destitute asylum seekers provided by the British Red Cross – many thanks to all who contributed. Following the overwhelmingly positive response to the idea of developing City of Sanctuary in Leicester those present were invited to a follow-up meeting to start to discuss and develop aims and objectives, an action plan, and strategies to take the idea forward, and to form a Committee to take responsibility for future developments.

This meeting will be held on Monday 3rd December 2007, starting at 9.30am – following requests from some of those present the next meeting will be held during the evening to enable attendance by those working during the day.

Finally, comments from some of the 44 returned feedback forms: very encouraging; would also be useful to think through how schools can be actively engaged to build on young people’s interest in global citizenship; very positive meeting; a database of all existing projects and what they do would be useful; great initiative, excellent meeting – lots of enthusiasm; as a refugee myself I would like to be involved as a link between organisations and refugees; let’s take this forward.