Community development

Refugee community organisations (RCOs) play an essential role in serving, involving, uniting and advocating on behalf of their communities. The Refugee Council regards its relationship with RCOs as one of vital importance and integral to the work it does.

With over ten years of collective community development experience, our Development Team (DT) plays a leading role in supporting and promoting refugee communities’ access to services and resources from voluntary and statutory agencies.

We work mainly with management committee members, staff and volunteers within RCOs and aim to support and assist them in making their organisations sustainable and effective in providing services to their communities.

Our philosophy and approach to community development work is based on the following principles:

• Listening and learning from the experiences of refugee communities
• Working in partnership with refugee communities and helping them to develop the skills, confidence and resources to address common issues of concern
• Enabling refugee communities to participate fully in UK society
• Supporting RCOs in influencing decision making at a national and local level
• Enabling refugee communities to share ideas and experience; and to work together to bring about social justice for refugees and asylum seekers

We provide specialist support to RCOs and refugee individuals, through the provision of information, advice, seminars, free training and one-to-one development support.

Services available

• Fundraising and sustainable development
• One-to-one capacity building support (short term and long term)
• Newsletters
• Information
• Training
• Room hire (free to refugee community organisations in our Leeds office)