I will be running the Hackney Half Marathon on Sunday 19th May to raise money for the British Red Cross Hackney centre where I work (as part of a small but mighty team of 3 full time and 2 part time staff!). All of the money I raise will go directly to the centre and our service users, and know from past years exactly what a huge difference it will make.

If you would like to come and see the centre and the work we do, all family and friends are welcome to our Open Day on Saturday 22nd June– there will be performances from our Men’s and Women’s support groups, lunch cooked by our talented volunteer chefs, exhibitions by our service users, spoken word, singing and more! Just get in touch with me if you’re interested!

ABOUT THE CENTRE:

The Hackney Destitution Centre is a community centre that provides practical support to asylum seekers with no right to work and no official support in London. We run English, IT and exercise classes, and people come here to rest, socialise, eat hot lunch and collect supermarket vouchers, clothing, hygiene items and groceries.

I have been working at the Hackney Centre for just over a year and I can’t tell you how much it brings to the community of people connected to it, myself included. We are a safe, warm, homely space and our mostly homeless clients travel from across London to eat together twice a week and join us for trips to local museums, parks and community organisations. We sustain our community space and distribution operation through the commitment of our team of wonderful volunteers; students, asylum seekers, retirees and people working part-time in many different lines of work who give their time and energy generously.

WHY GIVE NOW?

We are struggling for budget to provide the most basic service. The British Red Cross (and the refugee support sector more widely) has seen a huge decrease in donations with the soaring cost of living, and in the Refugee Support Service we are facing massively reduced teams, massively increased costs without budget increases, and dramatic property closures. This means that the people we support are dealing with our greatly decreased capacity on top of those same cost of living increases. Plus, the Hackney half event sold out 4 months quicker this year than last, so with less than half the running team size as previous years, we face losing a significant proportion of our annual budget. Of course, these squeezes come in a moment of  hostile Home Office policy and 15 years of cuts to public spending as a proportion of national spending. The people we support are the most isolated members of our society and have been hit hardest; in the year I have been working at the centre, we have seen an almost unmanageable increase in demand.

So please, please help us out with any amount you can give! Hackney Centre love from all our team, and I would love to see you at the centre on Sat 22nd June!