Our Current Beneficiaries
We had lots of applications from some really amazing projects and organisations, but we’ve now selected our two new beneficiaries for 2023: Room to Heal (to whom we’ll be providing financial and non-financial support), and Be Lifted Now (who we will be providing with non-financial assistance). Learn more about these organisations, and how your donations will be used, below.
Room to Heal
Room to Heal works with around 140 refugees and people seeking asylum from over thirty countries, mostly from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Many of the Room to Heal community have suffered horrific traumas, and experienced or seen awful violence. Often, they have lost their family and their community, and now find themselves isolated and marginalised in London.
Room to Heal provides vital holistic support for these survivors through therapy, casework and community activities, assisting them to improve their lives on numerous interconnected levels.
Casework ensures the survivor’s basic needs are met, and helps them exercise their rights and entitlements (such as access to housing, welfare, healthcare, legal advice, education and training). Room to Heal can assist in the navigation of the UK’s hugely complex asylum system.
Weekly therapy groups and community activities provide each person space and support to begin to heal from their scarring experiences, to build new, safe relationships and to repair their self-esteem and confidence. Room to Heal’s expertise lies in relational group therapy: here the primary focus is on relationships within the group (rather than that between the therapist and the individual), which hopes to promote group resilience and long-term, peer-led healing.
You can find out more about Room to Heal by watching their moving short film on this page, and on their website here.
How your donations will be used
Donations raised by BHF will be used by Room to Heal to fund much-needed therapeutic retreats for the refugees and asylum seekers in the Room to Heal community. These retreats can be life changing for a person who has suffered torture and organised violence, now trying to rebuild their lives in the UK.
We will also be providing Room to Heal with non-financial support.
Be Lifted Now
Be Lifted Now is a grass roots community-led organisation with a vision to uplift women and young girls, through activities such as book clubs, mother & daughter groups and debt advisory services.
The organisation focusses on providing support in North West London for the following women and girls: those from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds, domestic violence survivors, single mothers, those living in poverty, ex-offenders and those who are otherwise at-risk.
We’re not collecting financial donations for Be Lifted Now (although you’re very welcome to donate to them directly). Instead, we’re providing non-financial assistance with the help of a major global bank, including governance support and financial literacy training for the Be Lifted Now community.
You can read more about Be Lifted Now on their website here.