Local community group Herne Hill Welcomes Refugees (HHWR) has received Home Office approval for its application to host a second refugee family.
To help raise funds, it is organising a live music event Rocking for Refugees on Saturday (16 October) at Off the Cuff, as part of the Herne Hill Music Festival.
HHWR is now preparing a house to welcome the refugee family in the coming months.
The group has been running since 2017 with a team of about 20 volunteers and is always keen to have more people join, especially at this busy time.
In 2018, it volunteered to help bring a refugee family from Iraq to Herne Hill under the government’s community sponsorship scheme.
Local band Talking Strawberries will perform on Saturday to help generate enough money to support refugee families coming to the area.
They play a mix of funk, soul, rock and blues.
Support will come from Blue Spike, a fresh new band, pumping out soulful indie rock, punk and blues, with members from all corners of Europe.
Covid prevented HHWR from welcoming refugees in 2020 but the group is now planning to ramp up its efforts to welcome the family to Herne Hill and is urging local people to come and support them – they would love to see you.
The Home Office requires the group to find a property for the family to live in, ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) lessons, school places, access to GPs and medical teams, and a befriending team.
It must also raise funds to process the application and set the family up with everything it needs.
So far, 344 refugees have been resettled across the UK via the community sponsorship scheme.
Four of those families are now living in Lambeth, in addition to 28 other families who have arrived in the borough via the local authority scheme.
If you can’t make it to Off The Cuff, you can make a direct donation online.
