In 2020, many refugees and asylum seekers were moved to hotels across the UK, to be housed until more permanent accommodation could be found. Since then, staff from MRSN as well as our partners from Rainbow Haven have been going into hotels in order to provide welfare and immigration advice.
Since people from Afghanistan also began being housed in hotels, MRSN expanded our support in order to provide English classes, knitting groups, donations and other activities to people living there.
Below we have laid out some of the support we have provided, as well as details of our service times in the hotel.
For reasons of protecting the people we support, we cannot publicly disclose the hotels we work in. If you would be interested in running a session of a particular activity for clients within the hotels, please email Jennifer at jennifer@mrsn.org.uk
Weekly/Bi-weekly sessions
English lessons
We offer English lessons for women and children on Fridays at the hotels we work in.
Knitting groups
Volunteers run knitting sessions on Fridays for women living in the hotels.
Immigration Advice
We partner with Rainbow Haven to run immigration advice on Fridays at the hotels.
We are also looking for donations of educational resources for children, that do not require batteries or electric sockets. If you have any donations like this, please email jennifer@mrsn.org.uk
One off events
We run these events occasionally throughout the year, depending on volunteer and staff capacity. Thank you to everyone who makes these events possible.
Activities and shows
We were fortunate enough to provide a magic show in Arabic with Magic for Smiles.
Clothes donations
We partner with Chorlton Refugee Aid to collect donations and distribute them to people living in the hotels.
Ramadan meal delivery
For Ramadan 2022, businesses and volunteers across Manchester came together to provide meals for people in hotels in order for people to break fast.