Please donate food and toiletries to help locally situated people seeking asylum and refugees living in poverty. The Ask Club – Skelmersdale Ecumenical Centre distributes your donations to men, women, and children living in poverty in Skelmersdale and West Lancashire.
People who have fled danger to come to the UK asking for sanctuary receive a very small living allowance from the government. Forbidden from working, they live in extreme poverty. Your gifts of food and toiletries really make a difference. Thank you.
Why do we ask for donations?
The Ask Club at the Skelmersdale Ecumenical Centre supports locally situated asylum seekers and refugees, who have fled from war torn and crisis stricken countries around the world. Skelmersdale is home to around 150 men, women and children here to to seek asylum or live as refugees. The Ask Club weekly holds a drop-in session. We make food and toiletries freely available. The food donations ensure that these people; men, women and children, don’t go hungry because of poverty.
However, we can only do this with your help. See above for our latest donations needed list.
People seeking asylum are generally forbidden from working. They have ‘no recourse to public funds’ i.e. they cannot claim Universal Credit, Tax Credits, Income Support, Housing Benefits etc. The NASS S95 living allowance for people seeking asylum is less than £6 per day. This allowance is 40% of Universal Credit and 73% below the recognised poverty level.
Asylum seekers can wait years for their claim to be processed. The number of people claiming asylum having fallen by half in twenty years, but the waiting time to be processed has risen more than nine fold. This means people waiting for an asylum claim decision will live for many months, if not years, in extreme poverty. People who live for extended periods of time, unable to work, isolated from their families, suffer from poor health and experience social exclusion. Your donations help us help them.
Click the DEC image below to donate to the Afghan Crisis Appeal and the Ukrainian Humanitarian Appeal
