NEWS & BLOG
07 August, 2019 - By Leyla Williams
We’re fundraising for laptops
At West London Welcome, visitors and volunteers work together to build a safe, positive community providing shelter, support, and companionship. We aim to reduce the isolation people often feel while living in chaotic housing arrangements and with little structure in their lives. We also provide access to advisory services on immigration and housing, support visitors to understand their rights to healthcare, and help them make referrals for therapy and financial support.
But beyond the centre’s role as a safe space, West London Welcome is also an important place of teaching, learning, and progressing knowledge about life in London. Those who often cannot access or afford mainstream education come to the centre to improve their English or develop any number of other skills through our various classes and sessions. The centre welcomes students of all ages, many of whom have had their education back home disrupted.
For any of you in the UK working, studying, communicating, or just trying to find information, take a moment to imagine how difficult it would be to do these things in 2019 without a computer. This is the predicament of most of the refugees, asylum seekers and migrants visiting West London Welcome – they are in dire need of access to working computers. That’s why West London Welcome is teaming up with the ADOT Foundation to raise funds to purchaseten laptops by September, which will enable the centre to provide IT classes for our clients. The laptops, along with IT training, will give them the necessary skills needed to look for employment, to study, and to access information – key to their ability to settle and lead safe and well-connected lives here in the UK. Clients will also have laptop access to book vital appointments and to get in touch with loved ones.
You can donate to our laptop crowdfunder on our Localgiving page here.
We’re also on the lookout for working second hand laptops and smartphones to give visitors to take home. If you’re able to help, please send us a line at wlondoncentre@gmail.com.
