More than 20 Portsmouth organisations attend Ukrainian relief meeting at Guildhall to find ways for city to better support refugees

Lead by the founder of The Parenting Network, Matt Foster, and Viola Langley from donation group Portsmouth Helps Ukraine, about 25 organisations came together to deliver a plan on how to use their own support projects to coordinate resource solutions for Ukrainian families coming to the city.

More than 30 people from key organisations attended the special meeting at Portsmouth Guildhall on Thursday to work out how they can combine their resources to help refugee families.

Members discussed how Portsmouth’s projects could come together in a central location, with talks of a website as an umbrella tool to house information on where to access pantries, larders, vans for aid supplies, teaching and community fundraising events and more as a collective unit.

Matt Foster said: ‘We got together in order to create an answer, a way for people in Portsmouth to continue to do something tangible and effective and something physical.

‘We have organisations here that have warehouses, we have organisations here that have the transport.

‘The beauty of this meeting is that the answers were all ready there in the room.

‘We have organisations with access to be able to provide mobile phones, we spoke about access to bus passes, we spoke about raising money for bicycles, we spoke about making use of the larder network within the city.

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‘This includes The Cosham Larder and being able to provide funding for families to be able to access that.

‘We're really looking at how we can provide this holistic approach to families that are coming here, working with the organisation and very importantly that we're not duplicating work - that we're working together.’

A coordinator from community project GoodGym Portsmouth, the owner of Solent Sky Services, Councillor Suzy Horton, and the chairman of Portsmouth City of Sanctuary were among numerous representatives keen to get the ball rolling in working together to provide aid relief, transport, education services, translation assistance, career advice and more as a more united operation.

Among the attendees were kind-hearted trio Beth Davies, Ruth Haggerty and Karen Wilcock from Gosport who founded Packs of Love.

Beth, chief executive of the organisation, had an idea to make up hand-sewn toiletry bags full of products that could give refugees their dignity back.

She said: 'I had an idea when I saw what was happening I just had this feeling that I wanted to send them our heart behind everything.

‘Some people were thinking, "I really care about these people but how do I let them know?".

'I thought, they need items that would give them a sense of dignity so it's not just basics but it's a little bit more. If I was a lady in that position I'd want moisturiser and things to wash my hair.’

For the first week, the project was a one-woman-band but their efforts have since snowballed and collectively they’ve mustered enough toiletry bags to contribute to three transit vans to go out to refugees.

The women are hoping to team up with other organisations like KidsClothingLine, run by Bedhampton mum, Sally Codling, to build even stronger donation drives.

Minister Tracey Ansell from North End Baptist Church is a member of Hope International, which houses refugees across Portsmouth.

She said the meeting was a ‘real glimmer of hope’ built on the neighbourly efforts of the community.

‘We want to help do some fundraising events together so we're looking at setting up a concert together and providing the church premises for friendship groups, kitchen clubs and we run the pantry as well so we can help families come to the pantry and choose their own food,’ she added.

‘I think the main goal is for Portsmouth to be a shining light of how to work collectively to support people with the least amount of complication and then to build on that for any refugee from any country coming to the city.

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‘They can then access the network because never before have we been so coordinated together with different agencies and volunteer groups.

‘People struggle to find this information. What would be a great legacy is that we have coordination set up for any future refugees that come to seek sanctuary in our city.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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