Small charities support the issues our society has failed to address
Paul Streets, our CEO, contemplates organisations that quietly fill the gaps created by limited statutory services that remind us of the vital power of community.
11 April 2024
This article was originally published by Third Sector
As I contemplate my departure from the Lloyds Bank Foundation in a few months, one of the things I will miss most is my time with small local charities. I must have visited literally hundreds, and have never met any that didn’t inspire me. I remember titling one of my first Third Sector pieces ‘Meetings with remarkable people’, and it has remained that way.
I recently took a trip down the M4 to visit our charity partners in Swindon, Bristol and Newport – three organisations that reflect the diversity of approaches and communities.
In Swindon I met Claire and David, chief executive and chair of the Harbour Project. The organisation was founded by local people in 2000 to support Kosovan refugees and now supports 1,300 refugees from 72 different countries.
The Harbour Project has recently seen a rush of successful applications for refugee status as the Home Office seeks to clear its backlogs. But this has been compounded by a significant rise in homelessness as newly granted refugees have just 28 days before they are evicted from asylum accommodation. The Harbour Project estimates there are at least 50 street homeless refugees locally, and has sadly decided to start issuing sleeping bags to service users.
The charity is run by 12 local staff and around 90 volunteers, including teachers to support younger refugees and those needing to learn English. In spite of the national narrative around refugees, it receives terrific support from the local community and the council – which welcomed its work when Swindon became one of the dispersal centres.
At the other end of the trip in Newport I see what happens when we welcome new communities at Newport Yemeni Community Association in Pilligwenlly (Pill for short), one of the poorest communities in the city.
At NYCA I met Radfan – a footballer from the local Yemeni community who coaches young men and women to provide distraction from the high crime in the area. The NYCA has also recently raised around £200,000 to convert a derelict auctioneers into a glistening community centre open to all in a very diverse area.
The paradox between the national narrative around refugees and what can happen when we embrace and integrate new communities – typified by the need for charities like the Harbour Project – is never lost on me. We desperately need a positive narrative for those who arrive seeking sanctuary and wanting to make the UK their home.
In between The Harbour Project and NYCA I visit the Southmead Project in Bristol, which was founded 30 years ago by a survivor of sexual abuse and continues to provide support through a team of trained counsellors to survivors of any type of abuse aged 18 and above.
Many are referred from the NHS, which cannot meet needs as complex as this through its limited counselling sessions – usually 12. The Project provides up to 30 sessions over a nine-month period. It complements its individual therapeutic work with a range of innovative group-based approaches, including an active recovery programme designed by its members, which includes water sports, high rope work and axe-throwing.
Charities like the Southmead Project always remind me how shocking it is that statutory services are simply not resourced to support historic victims of sexual abuse, given how much these have become known in recent years.
So I approach the end of my work at the Foundation as I began it – in “meetings with remarkable people” who would regard themselves as anything but.
Small charities are often typified by their quiet, self-effacing style. As we characterised in The Value of Small in a Big Crisis, small charities “show up and stick around with their position of trust within communities”.
Without The Harbour Project, Southmead Project, NYCA and tens of thousands like them, we would all be impoverished. They support questions and issues that we have failed to address as a society, through either effective prevention at a much earlier stage, or effective remedy when that goes wrong.
The fact that they have to is an indictment of society. The fact that they do is a vindication of society.
And the question of what society we want to live in should be front and centre of our political debate both this year and in the coming decades, as we enter an era of low growth with an ageing population and a declining tax base.
Tough political choices will have to be made about whether we want a society with compassion, or a society with casualties.
