party time

There was quite a crowd of us last night. As well as Bho sleeping out we also had two people from the homeless charity Emmaus and in our social hour from 9.30 to 10.30 we had three visitors - two of whom were friends. The third person was a concerned passer by who had often tried to help our woman neighbour. He was able to find out more about homelessness and it was great that he could talk with a worker and a companion from Emmaus who had often had to sleep out in the past. He is going to come along to the homeless meeting at the end of this sleep out on Sat 14th Nov at 9am at the Friends Meeting House in Hill Street. (anyone concerned about homelessness is invited)

Emmaus is a great organisation. The companions live together as a community and work in their shop restoring and selling donated furniture which they collect and deliver. Often homeless people have got out of the habit of work and this is a great opportunity to regain those skills. They can stay as part of the community as long as they want to. . There are 19 Emmaus communities in Britain and over 300 worldwide. Set up by Father Abbe Pierre in France 60 years ago, the current president is Terry Waite.

Emmaus in Coventry also offer a solidarity room to a refused asylum seeker who, with no recourse to public funds, cannot go to other hostel accommodation. There are an estimated 2,000 destitute asylum seekers in Coventry who could not provide enough evidence to convince the UK Borders Agency of their need for sanctuary. Mostly they get by with help from friends, but many have nowhere to sleep at all and the option of returning to their country is not possible beacsue they are too frightened to return and anyway their country probably won't take them.

It was fitting that there was a bit of a party atmosphere as it was Bho's birthday when he woke up this morning. Bho works at Coventry Refugee Centre and is leading the Hope Destitution Project in conjunction with Coventry Peace House, CTRIC (Churches Together with Refugees in Coventry), Carriers of Hope and Broad Street Drop In - all organisations doing what they can to address the problem which destitute people face. There is a already a fund which the organisations can call on to get emergency money, shoes, bus fares to Solihull to sign with Immigration etc. The next step is get houses for a peppercorn rent which destitute people can live in. It is working well in Birmingham where they now have 6 houses. The success depends on the energy of motivated passionate people who care enough to achieve what can seem impossible. We need more people like that.

And we need more organisations to push the boundaries in solidarity with destitute people like Emmaus have done.