Helping Digitally Isolated Refugees:

POSTED ON JANUARY 27TH, 2021 AT 2:30PM

We've been privileged to get to know the Welcome Churches team recently, and we have been inspired by their work enabling churches to become welcoming communities for refugees.

We're excited to be launching a partnership with them over the next few months to help provide more refugees with access to the internet. This will provide them with a much-needed lifeline to online church services, the ability to make video calls to loved ones, and help them to connect with other people, including attending online English classes.

The Refugees Online project will enable churches to source devices for families and individuals, such as smart phones, tablets and laptops (whether new or refurbished), as well as data packages. This is where Acts 435, and our donors can step in! We will be hoping to meet as many of these needs as possible - from all over their church network, and churches from the Welcome Churches network who have also decided to partner with Acts 435 will be able to post requests for these needs, as well as other needs they encounter during their ministries.

The project has been launched this week with the Welcome Churches network, as well as the Acts 435 network, and we hope that we will have lots of requests for devices and data coming in by the beginning of March when we hope to update our donors on this exciting project.

As well as the physical devices and data Welcome Churches are also looking for refugee volunteers to sign up to become Digital Champions who will help other refugees and asylum seekers to connect digitally across the UK, by providing support in their first language.

You can read more about their project on their website: https://welcomechurches.org/updates/help-digitally-isolated-refugees-get-online-this-lockdown/