Charity gets £338k Mail Force aid to find homes for refugees

BRITONS opening their homes to Ukrainian refugees are being supported by the generosity of Mail on Sunday readers.

Refugees at Home has received £338,000 from the astonishing £11million so far raised by the Mail Force Ukraine Refugee Appeal, and is using the money to link those fleeing the country with suitable hosts.

Sara Nathan, co-founder of Refugees at Home, said: ‘All the money that Mail Force provided is going on massively increasing our operations so we can process, visit and assess the more than 11,600 people who have generously come forward to host.

‘We are grateful to the Mail readers and donors for giving us the opportunity to step up and respond to the scale of the host applications. If you hadn’t made that grant, we would not have been able to respond as fast, or possibly as much.’

The number of hosts in the charity’s database has soared by 600 per cent since the beginning of March. Overall, it has placed 2,679 refugees with host families, including more than 300 who are in the UK after the Government processed their visas.

Tom and Jane Oakley, from Newham, East London, have offered to host refugees. ‘We saw the horrific situation and as we have space which we think is suitable, we wanted to offer it up,’ Mr Oakley said.