From The Chair

This month I want to tell you about a refugee project which is a bit different from the kind of refugee work FPS has done before. It’s a new monthly lunch club for LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers. The club will meet once a month at FPS on a Sunday and we aim to hold our first session soon after Pesach.

It’s modelled on a lunch club that West London Synagogue has been running for a year. After the first year, Social Action Manager Nic Schlagman did an evaluation of the project. He was blown away by the positive effect that participants reported on their mental health and wellbeing.

Many LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers have never been out to anyone. They were often terrified to be out in their home countries, yet even after reaching relative safety in the UK, they continue to fear being out in both the refugee communities and accommodation where they live – often Home Office hotels or hostels. They are exceptionally lonely and isolated. For many of them, the lunch club is the first place where they have ever been able to just be - to socialise, make friends, and know that they are welcomed and accepted for who they are. Participants have been identified through a partner organisation, Rainbow Migration, and come from many different countries. A majority of the lunch club guests are women.

WLS now has a waiting list for their lunch club, as part of its success is keeping it on a relatively intimate scale. Nic approached FPS to ask if we would be interested in setting up a new LTBTQ+ lunch-club, in order to expand capacity.

tamara joseph

We’ve discussed the idea with the Barnet Refugee Welcome Board (BRWB), proposing that together, we should run a 6-month pilot at FPS for a dozen guests. Through the BRWB we will be able to get the relatively small amount of funding we need to launch the club.

After visiting the lunch club at WLS in February, hearing about the long journeys some would take to get there, it was clear how vital and worthwhile participants found the session. Once the group realised why we were there, both volunteers and asylum seekers were full of enthusiasm to tell us about the sense of freedom, warmth, and support that the lunch club provides and the friendships made. Many of them offered to help us get ours off the ground if we embarked on our own club.

The key thing we need now is volunteers – people to plan, shop, and cook lunch, set up, serve, clear up, and socialise with guests. Volunteers will come from several local synagogues and do not all need to identify as LGBTQ+ themselves, although we will certainly need some volunteers who do. We do need a small core group of people who are willing (within reason) to make a regular commitment to attend once a month. If you’d like to be a part of this new project, please e-mail me at chair@fps.org. We’re also looking to increase our direct support to refugees and asylum seekers in Barnet hotels, especially the new hotel that has opened up just down the road from us. This is still in the planning stages, but do get in touch if this is something you’d like to be a part of.