How can we help? Aid volunteers give their advice

BRITISH JEWS involved in the refugee relief effort say the best way to help is to donate money and time.

The message came after the Board of Deputies announced it is holding a public meeting — at the JW3 community centre on October 7 — to canvas opinion on the most productive ways to help.

Nic Schlagman, community projects manager of West London Synagogue’s asylum seeker drop-in centre, said: “The most important thing people can do right now is to give their time. It is important to remember that while there is a crisis happening in Europe we also have refugees and asylum seekers here that need our help, too.”

Mr Schlagman recommended people write to their MPs to tell them they want the country to do more to help. “That can be really powerful,” he said.

Aid volunteers at New North London Synagogue recommended giving money to the established charities working on the ground. The Masorti shul set up the first drop-in centre for asylum seekers nine years ago and it is now the largest service of its kind in the UK.

A spokesperson said: “Giving your clothes to donations going to Calais is not what is needed. They are inundated. The biggest needed for us to stay running is money.”

The New North London drop-in cen- tre opens once a month and supports more than 300 asylum seekers from over 50 different countries, including those whose claims have failed.

The spokesperson said: “Asylum seekers already here in Britain face a very bleak existence. Not only have they

escaped war, torture, loss or been separated from their family, they are barely entitled to anything when they get here.

“They are put up in home office accommodation and have to survive on less than £40 a week. They can’t work and if they are refused asylum they are on the street. It can take years before they are denied or granted refugee status.”

Teacher Debbie Rose set up a drop-in centre at North Western Reform Synagogue to help asylum-seekers once they receive refugee status. Ms Rose said: “If people here really wanted to help they could think about giving a refugee a job. We have people who come to us desperate to work, and once they have refugee status they can find it hard to be given the chance.”

She added: “Another way people can help is think about a skill they have that might benefit the refugees. We have a couple who ran an employment agency and they came in and gave advice on interviews.”

Since World Jewish Relief Refugee launched their crisis appeal two weeks ago, it has raised more than £300,000 for Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Campaigns manager Richard Verber praised the community’s generosity and reiterated the difficulties in initiatives that urge people to send clothes or aid materials abroad. He said: “Goods rarely end up where the humanitarian need is greatest, despite the best of intentions on the part of those giving.”

Outside the UK,“the most effective way to support people in dire need remains

through donating money,” he said.

“Donating money enables us to purchase humanitarian materials like food and medicine in-country, saving the time and cost of sending things there.”

The Jewish Council for Racial Equality director Edie Friedman agreed. She said: “Sending money gives aid agencies the flexibility to respond to the ever changing situation. It is the best way to help with the crisis as it unfolds.”

London-based human-rights charity René Cassin also endorsed donating to aid agencies such as WRJ as the best option.

But campaigns and programme manager Sam Grant added that the most important issue in the UK was raising awareness of the detention of asylum seekers.

Finchley Progressive Synagogue’s Rabbi Rebecca Qassim Birk is leading a local Citizens UK campaign to get 50 Syrian refugees resettled in Barnet. She encouraged other communities to urge their boroughs to do the same.

A Board delegation led by president Jonathan Arkush outlined the community’s plans to aid refugees at a meeting with Home Secretary Theresa May on Monday. Mr Arkush said the crisis had a “historic resonance” for Jews.

Kindertransport survivors and rabbis from across the community delivered a letter to Downing Street, calling on the Prime Minister to offer a minimum of 10,000 refugees asylum in the UK over the next six months. The letter, initiated by social action charity Tzelem, was signed by 105 rabbis and cantors.

‘Donating money enables the purchase offo od and medicine’