our work
our work
Welcome to our Campaigns, Events & Community stories
Resistance to Closure of the National Hotel
In Spring 2024, we organised a local campaign to resist the closure of the National Hotel, where people seeking asylum had been placed by the Home Office accommodation provider, Clearsprings Ready Homes. The closure was an unnecessary and traumatising displacement for...
Commemorative picnic for Sharif Barko, Darfur, and Sudan (June 2023)
Sharif Barko was a Haringey resident who came to the UK as a refugee from Darfur in 2002. He experienced the Hostile Environment system first-hand but nonetheless became a tireless campaigner for his community, the Massaleit people of Darfur, and for migrant justice...
2022 local election hustings
On Thursday 28 April Haringey Welcome hosted a local election hustings at the McQueens Theatre in Wood Green, with a focus on access to healthcare and the experiences of those with insecure immigration status. We began with a screening of the film NHS Borderlands, an...
Haringey Welcome creative writing projects (2018-2022)
Haringey Welcome designed and ran a schools poetry competition over two consecutive years (2018/2019), and facilitated and funded a further creative writing project, ‘Explore Your Story’, with migrant women who met during the first Covid lockdown and produced a...
Haringey Covid Chronicles short film and audio project (2021-22)
This is a series of five audio-visual shorts exploring the theme of ‘missing’ amongst migrant residents of Haringey during Covid, produced and directed by cultural anthropologist Dr Meghanne Barker. This was a Haringey Welcome partnership project with Dr Meghanne...
Remembering Sharif (2021)
A virtual memorial to honour our remarkable friend and colleague On Sunday 21 March 2021 on Zoom, members of Haringey Welcome joined together with many friends and relatives of Majed Hassan (or, as we knew him, Sharif Barko) to pay tribute to and...
Access to primary healthcare for migrant residents of Haringey – survey and report (2020)
Report on a mini-survey: Access to primary healthcare – GP surgeries, May 2020 Following reports that migrants in Haringey often struggle to access primary healthcare services via GP surgeries and that they are wrongly told they require ID and proof of address to...
Covid music fundraiser for The Voice of Domestic Workers (2020)
Thank you! We made it! At midnight on 9 September, our crowdfunder had raised £5,564for The Voice of Domestic Workers. With £5,000 from our very generous anonymous donor, that makes an amazing £10,564. (If anyone would like to donate now, the crowdfunder will still...
Haringey commits to Welcome! (2018)
Scroll back to autumn 2017, when we were still Refugees Welcome Haringey. We had been pressing the then Council to accept Syrian refugee families from the government’s Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme; and finally, after many meetings and lobbyings and events...
Feed My Friend (2018)
We want every child in Haringey that needs a free school meal to get one. At present access to free school meals, help with uniform costs, and the pupil premium depends on parent’s migration status. Children whose parents have ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ cannot...
Pledge
In 2015 we began our first campaign as Refugees Welcome Haringey. In 2018 we relaunched as Haringey Welcome, with a wider and more inclusive vision, with the following pledge. Local residents, organisations, elected representatives, schools, and faith groups were...
OUR IMPACT
– We campaigned to make Haringey the first Welcome’ borough in the UK, and continue our ongoing campaign with local partners to make the ambition of welcome and inclusion for all a reality.
– With Haringey Migrant Justice Coalition partners we have mobilised demonstrations in support of local residents at an asylum hotel who were threatened with being moved to Napier Barracks and Bibby Stockholm barge.
– We have led calls for a Haringey-wide working group convened by the Council to tackle the Home Office-made problem of refugee homelessness, and have partnered with The Museum of Homelessness to raise funds to help refugees move on into secure housing.
– We partnered with Waging Peace to hold a picnic commemoration in Alexandra Park for Sharif Barko, a Haringey Welcome member from Darfur, and for Sudanese communities across the UK dealing with the ongoing conflict and genocide in their country. Over 100 people attended.
– We led a mystery shopper survey and produced a report demonstrating serious barriers to access primary healthcare at GP surgeries in the borough for undocumented migrants and people with no fixed address. Our report led to a further nationwide investigation by The Bureau of Investigative Journalists, and to a later partnership in an in-depth project with Healthwatch Haringey.
– We hold annual ‘All Welcome’ community events that showcase the amazing range of community and arts projects, campaigns, and activities across Haringey and bring our diverse community together for amazing food and entertainment.
– We have facilitated and run writing and poetry projects in schools and with a group of migrant women, producing two poetry anthologies and a book, ‘Write On!’
– We organised and raised £10k for a music fundraiser to support The Voice of Domestic Workers’ emergency appeal during lockdown.
– We campaigned for Haringey Council to resettle ten Syrian families in Haringey via the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme.
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