OUR MISSION
ABOUT US
CHARIS is a Charitable Incoporated Organisation, it has been formed by three Churches, Taunton Vineyard, Creech St Michael Baptist Church and St Mary Magdalene. CHARIS was formed in direct response to the Government's opportunity to set up community sponsorship groups to resettle refugees in the United Kingdom. Moved by the plight of thousands of Syrian Refugees, the three churches came together to respond to this opportunity to get involved and show compassion and care to families who are currently living in Refugee camps across the Middle East.
WAY FORWARD
CHARIS BOARD
Simon Billington: Taunton Vineyard
Rev Ewen Huffman: Creech St Michael Baptist Church
Richard Austin: St Mary Magdalene Church, Taunton
Rathika Chinnadurai: Creech St Michael Baptist Church
Gordon East: Creech St Michael Baptist Church
Phil Hindle: Taunton Baptist Church (Treasurer)
Lisa Westlake: Taunton Vineyard
Ralph Bullock, Creech St Michael Baptist Church
When CHARIS was formed in August 2016 in response to the increasing refugee crisis resulting from the Syrian civil war and the mass migration of humanity fleeing violence, devastation and persecution, we had no idea where it might lead........
However, God certainly did!
Our vision is to bring hope and transform the lives of refugees and through doing this to change not only our communities and neighbourhoods for the better but to change the way we ourselves relate to the world around us and in our relationships with others.
Today CHARIS now seeks to achieve this through three main activity streams.
The first and still very much our core area is the family resettlement program. In this we resettle vulnerable refugee families fleeing the Middle East, under the Government’s Community Sponsorship scheme. We hope to continue to do this as long as have the resources, people and funding to do so.
Our second area is to encourage and support other groups similar to ourselves to do the same. To this end, in recent weeks, we are delighted to let you know that CHARIS has taken on the role of being the regional coordinator for supporting the growth of Community Sponsorship across the South West. Lisa has started to work part time for CHARIS and as part of her role directly supports this work.
Being a regional coordinator involves: reaching out to groups at different stages in their journeys and providing them with help, training and support; promoting and creating opportunities to share the story of community sponsorship to encourage others to take up the baton,; and developing relationships and engaging with LAs , MPs etc to generate support and help to remove barriers to allow community sponsorship to grow.
Thirdly, we are seeking to set up a Welcome centre for all refugees here in Taunton. Our heart for this centre is to create a sustainable resource base for all refugees to access and a point of engagement and interaction allowing community groups and refugees to work and learn together on projects and in activities.
In the next few months we will be undertaking a research study to see what activities and services this centre might provide. This will involve interviews with a wide range of stakeholders including refugees and visits to see what other refugee centres in the South West do. The study will run though to September at which point we hope to apply for operational funding to run the Welcome Centre from 2019.
