The power of refugee befriending
Why charity HostNation believes finding friends for asylum seekers and refugees boosts wellbeing for the whole community
Refugee Sheila and her friend Sabrina
Harriet Paterson
Communications Manager, HostNation
Harriet Paterson
Communications Manager, HostNation
Issue 70 | February 2024
“Friendship is the most important gift I have to offer.”
I love this comment from volunteer Sabrina about her motivation for making a refugee friend. At HostNation we exist to promote the simple joys that bring people together in friendship. Refugee, local resident or the wider community, everyone wins.
Operating in London, Manchester and Tyne & Wear, we are a small charity with just one mission – to find friends for asylum seekers and refugees. Locals like Sabrina sign up online to our befriender database. We then run checks and provide training before carefully matching them with people referred to us by refugee support agencies.
The effects can be transformational. Over the past year, 93% of asylum seekers and refugees found having a HostNation match a positive experience. As Sabrina’s friend Sheila explains: “It has been a turning point for me. I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing now without Sabrina.”
The reality of life for many waiting in the asylum backlog is social isolation, poverty and fear. Usually, the only Brits they meet are officials. So the chance to make a local friend, be themselves, relax and have fun, can mean recovering a part of themselves that has become buried.
Sheila’s story
Sheila came to the UK after suffering deep trauma in her home country. Before she met Sabrina, she mostly stayed home, fearful of venturing out. Not only was this bad for her, but it was a big loss to the wider community.
Now Sabrina has helped her unlock a dynamic side that has allowed Sheila to become a vibrant part of her neighbourhood. Sheila is full of life, as she explains:
“She has introduced me to so many hubs. My week is full! I have joined a choir, I am in a dance and yoga club, she has helped me to meet other African poets. The centre of my world has grown bigger and bigger. She has enlarged it.”
“We count him as part of the family. Definitely friends forever I hope!”
Easy and life-enriching
It’s not only the refugees who benefit. Away from the often toxic narrative around migration, sympathetic citizens are quietly getting on with welcoming new arrivals – and feeling better for it.
“It’s just been so easy and life-enriching,” says Clare, a charity worker in Manchester matched with Libyan refugee Waseem. “We count him as part of the family. Definitely friends forever I hope!”
Waseem can’t say enough to his friend about what she means to him: “Before I met you, I had no desire to do anything, everything was dark in front of me, I just stay home and sleep. You saved my life.”
An important rule is that HostNation sets no formula for friendship. People go for walks or cycle rides, meet over coffee, cook together, share stories. Waseem loves watching football with Clare’s husband: “Now he has a blokey friend and they have a right laugh,” as she says.
People who would otherwise never have met find they get along famously and love exchanging the riches of their respective cultural backgrounds.
A light on the horizon
It can be so disheartening to survey the refugee landscape in the UK: the Illegal Migration Bill; the spectre of flights to Rwanda; the cramped asylum hotels; the degrading Bibby Stockholm barge and the surge in refugee homelessness.
Yet each friendship that is made between a person seeking sanctuary and a kindly local is a source of light on this dark horizon. Our befrienders find the current refugee situation dehumanising and unacceptable. And so, they step forward with welcoming arms, giving refugees a pathway into our communities. Statistics become human beings, and we are all better as a result.
