We had a brilliant day yesterday, attending the launch of the University of Birmingham’s research into Community Sponsorship, which is now available on their website. We also hosted the first annual Community Sponsorship Assembly, and Group members who were eligible voted for the inaugural members of the Community Sponsorship Council. The events gave us an excellent opportunity to meet Group members, our partners and those involved in recognising and growing Community Sponsorship in the UK.
We heard from those attending that there’s quite a bit of confusion about who we are and what we do, so we are keen to clarify for everyone!
What do Reset do?
Our remit is to scale and support Community Sponsorship in the UK. We are funded by the Home Office and other philanthropic foundations to do this work. We design and deliver the compulsory training that Groups need to have as part of their application, and we provide the advice and guidance you need through the application process and beyond. We do this primarily through our training website and at in person training and workshops in your area.
We also work closely with the Home Office, feeding back and resolving issues raised by Community Sponsorship Groups; for example we worked with the Home Office on the redesign of the application form for Groups, the bringing in of void property costs reimbursement and more recently consulted with Groups on their experience of the training that the refugees they support receive to prepare them for life in the UK.
We provide ideas and guidance for how Groups can get involved with Community Sponsorship, work to find new organisations, sectors and people to join the Community Sponsorship movement and share best practice as widely as possible.
Working in Partnership
Community Sponsorship is not about the work of one organisation; it’s about the extraordinary people in communities moved to help refugees. There are a large number of organisations who have been instrumental in the success of Community Sponsorship and advise, guide and support Groups, sometimes as a Lead Sponsor, across the UK and their experience is absolutely invaluable. Reset totally recognise this and as such, we work with a growing group of Partners on a grant agreement basis, with Reset providing direct funding to support their work. We know this can get confusing as there are a lot of organisations involved. We’re not in competition with one another and we definitely don’t want to be duplicating effort or confusing any Group!
As a Group, you should feel comfortable working with and receiving support from whoever feels most appropriate, whether that’s Reset, a Reset Partner or someone else entirely, different organisations may have different approaches — check which suits you best, and feel free to seek advice from more than one source if that works for you. However, if you are working with a Lead Sponsor, you should check in with them about their approach to your application and support — they hold legal responsibility for your Group and as such should feel comfortable with where you seek advice and how you proceed.
Communicating with Groups
We don’t think anyone has a complete list of all of the Community We don’t think anyone has a complete list of all of the Community Sponsorship Groups in the UK and their contact details so it can be really hard to get messages out to everyone about all of the activities and changes within Community Sponsorship. At Reset, we rely heavily on our Partners to communicate changes and developments with the Groups they support but we’re keen that Groups don’t miss out. We urge you to sign up for our newsletter and we’ll share information on events, changes to the Community Sponsorship process and new opportunities with you.
If you’d like to be connected with a Group or Groups, please let us know and we’ll do our best to accommodate this.
We heard yesterday that Group members would like more opportunities to get together, and we will be hosting a series of Community Sponsorship get-togethers in each region in the Autumn, so make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter or following us on social media to receive information about these.
The Reset Team are always happy to hear from Groups, provide clarity and guidance, so do please contact us at any time. We have a small office based in London, but our work is in all regions and nations; so we’re never far away!
