In recent months, Grace Hosting has struggled to find sufficient Hosts to accommodate destitute asylum seekers. Although we provide about 30 nights of emergency accommodation each week, we struggle to find places for about 3 nights each week.
With this in mind, we thought we’d try and recruit some new Hosts by issuing a Press Release about our work, and letting people know how they might help.
Since then, we’ve made quite a splash.
It started out with local MP Alex Sobel citing a story from our last Friends of LASSN on the floor of the House of Commons (he starts speaking at 16:07) and telling the world that he and his family used to be Grace Hosts (click on the photo to see him in action).
This was quickly picked up by both the Wharfedale Observer and the Yorkshire Evening Post
Later that week we had a lovely piece on ITV Calendar thanks to reporter Rachel Townsend, who is actually a Grace Host volunteer herself!
This featured our volunteer host Theresa, and Joti who has been staying with her, and who were happy to be filmed. It gave a lovely insight in to what hosting is all about.
The next week we found out we’d made it into North Leeds Life…
And finally Theresa (again) and Clare appeared on BBC Radio Leeds last Sunday with Richard Stead talking about their experience as Hosts, friendships and Afghan Sunday Lunches.
You can listen to their fantastic interview by clicking here and listening from about 2 hours and 7 minutes (after Rod Stewart).
Thank you to the volunteers who agreed to be involved, the journalists who covered the story, and everyone working behind the scenes to make this happen ( and in particular Dee Marshall, one of our Trustees).
All this publicity has lead to a few people coming forward who are thinking about volunteering as a host with LASSN – although we still need more. .
If you know anyone who may be interested – perhaps people you work with, groups you attend, family or friends please do give them Jo’s email [email protected] and we can have a chat.
We also have some postcards about volunteering with LASSN which we can send to you if you would like them to give out at places of work, events etc. Your help in recruiting more host volunteers is much appreciated.
And finally, thanks for letting us show off a bit. It’s unusual for us to have gotten this amount of coverage, but we thought you’d like to know…
