Although we beat our fundraising goal in 2019 (see below), there has been a considerable and rapid increase in demand for our services. This has heavily impacted our finances so we are fundraising as a matter of urgency.
We’re raising funds for:
- A project supporting girls who are unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC), to give a similar provision to girls that the boys have with Nations United football.
- Fees for a capable young student’s course.
- Our running costs – we need to find funds to continue existing.
- Funds to train a young refugee as a paid intern. We will support them to find a job at the end of the internship.
Donations of any size gratefully recieved. If you are from a fund or other donor organisation (or are a fundraiser) and could be intersted in supporting us, we’d love to hear from you!
Our goal was to raise £40,000 by the end of 2019. We raised it by mid-2019!
Since Sanctuary in Chichester launched in January 2016, we’ve achieved a lot.
Our services for refugees and asylum seekers now include support for Syrian refugee families, weekly drop-in sessions, a dedicated football team, English language tuition, and emergency accommodation and finance.
In late 2017 we launched a campaign to raise £40,000, to enable us to do much more. It’s a huge credit to our talented and dedicated voluntary fundraising team that they raised the target funds much more quickly than expected, and all our supporters should feel proud to have been a part of this successful mission – thank you everybody!
With this funding we are:
- Creating more drop-in facilities
- Helping more Syrian families arrive and settle in West Sussex
- Extending our English learning service
- Developing a Pathways to Work programme to help refugees back into employment
- Providing shelter to destitute asylum-seekers, sometimes at short notice.
- Increasing awareness of, and access to, our services.
- Community engagement: boosting understanding among local residents of the issues that refugees and asylum seekers face.
- Developing services for women and girls
Since we launched the campaign to raise £40,000, our work has expanded rapidly, meaning ever more funds are needed to run our services. Our Fundraising Committee (all volunteers) work hard to continually find ways to attract donations, so that we can consistently support and offer sanctaury to those in need in our area. They would love some new members and we’d be delighted to find some volunteers with fundraising experience to help us ensure we can conutue our vital work.
How you can help:
- Sign up to easyfundraising.org.uk and Amazon Smile, so you raise money for us at no extra cost to you, every time you shop online!
- You can hold your own fundraising event on our behalf, whether it’s a coffee morning or a sponsored bike ride. We’ve listed some of our ideas for fundraising here but would love to hear yours, and to help you with fundraising information and materials.
- Join our friendly fundraising committee, which meets every month in Chichester and is doing great things.
- Volunteer for SiC – we have loads of volunteer opportunities.
- Tell your friends and family about us on social media; follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
- Donate. No amount is too small (or large!)
– £15 could pay for an English language textbook.
– £25 could cover the monthly cost of broadband internet so a refugee family is able to contact loved ones.
– £100 would provide a destitute asylum seeker with food for a month.
Visit our Donate page to find out more about giving.
For more information about fundraising for Sanctuary in Chichester please contact Tony Toynton.
