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RAIS is proud to share its first ever Impact Report! 🥳 In our first year funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, we have worked hard to find out what impact we are having on asylum seekers and refugees, volunteers at RAIS, the wider community, and how we have improved as an organisation. We are delighted with the findings! rais.org.uk/our-impact/ A huge thank you to Sharon of Think Forward C.I.C.; her work with RAIS on measuring impact and writing this report has been amazing.

RAIS was busy last week! We began our first ever LGBTQ+ social group for asylum seekers and refugees which will take place weekly on an invitation-only basis to ensure it remains a safe space. Then on Wednesday afternoon, we were joined by Mark from LDCVS at our drop-in, who worked with more than 10 asylum seekers and refugees to get them started volunteering locally. We are very happy to say Mark will be joining us on a monthly basis! In the evening, RAIS had its Annual General Meeting with our amazing members with a wonderful meal from The Global Village

Today we delivered our annual guest lecture to Asylum and Immigration Law students at Lancaster University Law School - Law. An introduction to our charity was given by our Operations Manager, and then RAIS's Senior Support Worker, Prof Dr Omar Jouzdan, a client and incoming volunteer named 'Sam', and one of our asylum seeking volunteers, shared their stories of claiming asylum in the UK. They gave a valuable insight into the realities of the asylum process and the challenges it brings when trying to tell their stories. We really appreciated the attentiveness and curiosity from students, who asked some great

On Thursday this week, RAIS Lancaster's asylum seeker and refugee theatre group performed at The Dukes, Lancaster as part of their VE & VJ Day 80th Celebration, titled 'Our Freedom: Then & Now', a national project funded through Arts Council England. The group gave a performance they created with a theatre director, Adam Davies, using physical theatre and text to respond to the question: What does freedom mean to you? The group of 5 came from Palestine, Yemen, Eritrea, and Kurdistan. They performed on a double-billed night, with wonderful poets Prime Time, a Dukes' community group for older people. They

Sanctuary Cinema Club will be showing an Iranian film called Motreb Motreb on Saturday18th of October at 2pm. It's a free showing at Lancaster Library! Please do come along, it should be a great afternoon.

🧡Messages of Welcome to Refugees🧡 RAIS received dozens of 'messages of welcome' from Conversation Over Borders, a non-profit supporting refugees and people seeking asylum in the UK with English, mental health support, befriending, and digital inclusion. They have gathered thousands of messages from people across the UK, including from young people in schools and univerities, to speak directly to refugees and people seeking asylum and counter the narratives of hostility; saying they are welcome here and we stand with them, and see their pain. They very kindly shared some of these beautiful messages with RAIS. Last week, we shared these

RAIS had an amazing day out with asylum seeking and refugee children and their parents at Jamie's Farm in Skipton on Friday! 🚜Jamie's Farm are an incredible charity offering transformative days out and residential trips for young people in the UK to help them connect with animals, nature, and good growing, on working farms! We were honoured to be the first refugee group to go to the Skipton farm. We wanted to share some photos from such a special day. 📸 We started the day with introductions and a check-in with everyone, including the lovely staff and volunteers at Jamie's

We did a mapping exercise of the people who currently come or used to come to RAIS for support to see what this looks like globally. We were amazed to see it in an image - so many countries, cultures, and people from across the world have arrived in Lancaster and Morecambe and walked through our doors at the Cornerstone. And we are so happy they arrived here to such a welcoming city. Yet it is a sobering reminder of the state of human rights and peace globally. People have to flee for many forms of persecution and harm, including

A very warm congratulations to two of our clients who were successful in their appeals for Leave to Remain! Both have been granted Refugee Status after a long and difficult appeals process and the shock of the initial negative decisions. RAIS Lancaster provided significant support for the two individuals during their journey in the asylum system, and were there until the end, sitting with them in court and liaising with their solicitors and barristers. We weren't expecting both hearings to be scheduled for the same day in two different cities, but our staff and volunteers made sure they were there.

We had a wonderful first theatre workshop session at The Dukes, Lancaster, led by Carly! The refugees and asylum seekers attending explored creating characters and using movements to tell a story with the use of handmade 'puppets' they created themselves. It was lovely to have a light-hearted afternoon full of creativity and play.

We are so happy to be partnering with The Dukes, which is such a well-loved part of Lancaster and beyond! What an honour. Until next week!

The wait is over – RAIS has a new look! We’re excited to unveil our new banner, now featured on our website 👉 rais.org.uk/ and right here on our Facebook page. This stunning design was the unanimous favourite among several entries — chosen by our volunteers, staff, and Trustees. A heartfelt thank you to Morecambe-based artist Molly Bland for her creativity, dedication, and thoughtful approach in bringing this vision to life. Her artwork perfectly captures the spirit of RAIS, and we couldn’t be more grateful. To see more of Molly’s incredible work, visit her Instagram: www.instagram.com/molly.bland/ — and if you’re

Happy Volunteers Week to our incredible team of volunteers at RAIS. This charity began as a grassroots, volunteer-run organisation, there to help asylum seekers and refugees arriving Lancaster. While RAIS has changed and grown, taking on staff, we remain volunteer-led, and are so lucky to have such committed, passionate, and talented individuals who keep this essential service running. They staff four drop-ins a week, translate in-person in many languages, accompany clients to the GP, hospital, appeals court, council, bank, do casework in office appointments, do admin and process registrations, manage the charity as trustees, do IT support, and direct the

A busy drop-in today at St Thomas' Church Centre full of support work for family reunion, asylum claim appeals, travel documents, university applications, and supporting a homeless refugee to find housing. A big thank you to our Kurdish barber for the free haircuts for the asylum seekers and refugees 💇🧡