Urgent request for volunteers to help support resettlement of Afghan families in the UK

Local Citizens UK groups have put out an urgent call to all their partners to try and find volunteers, working in groups of six, to help support their effort to resettle 100 Afghan families in UK in the coming two months. This is not a request for hosting or accommodation.

The resettlement scheme is a partnership between Citizens UK and the UK Government, called 'Communities for Afghans', which aims to support 100 families to move to the UK by September. Support from the group will be for a period of 24 months and will be around accessing services, education, health care etc. There will be strong support to groups from Citizens UK and existing Afghan refugee support charities, including a central Citizens UK team dedicated to finding housing, and significant top-up funding to support rentals.

Many of the families are those who worked as interpreters or for the British Council etc and had to flee the Taliban after the withdrawal of UK and US forces. They are now in third countries - mostly in Pakistan or Qatar - and have been stuck for many, many months without papers in hotels, at risk of deportation back to Afghanistan, even though they are cleared to move to the UK. All they need are the community sponsors to move here.

If anyone would be interested in joining a group of volunteers to support a family please complete this form. Citizens UK can help explain more about the scheme.

The timescales are very short with volunteers needing to be identified by the middle of next week in order for the families to come.

Read more about the scheme: www.sponsorrefugees.org/get-involved/communities-for-afghans/