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We’re looking to understand more about the impact of Community Sponsorship on the sponsors themselves. What do you learn by becoming a sponsor? What do you gain?
We hear lots of sponsors talk about how doing Community Sponsorship has changed them, but we don’t often get the specifics. We’ve designed this survey for sponsors to take when they reach the end of the Sponsor Agreement (one year after welcoming a refugee family) to get a better insight.
We hope that this will be a tool for us to improve the scheme and to demonstrate its worth for communities as well as for refugees.
We’re collecting results on a rolling basis. If you reached the end of the Sponsor Agreement after the end of May 2020 and haven’t filled out a survey, please email us letting us know which Community Sponsorship Group you’re from and we’ll send you a link to complete the survey. All responses are anonymous.
Check out some results from the first round of analysis below.
Initial results show that only 22% of sponsors gave less than 1 hour per week to Community Sponsorship on average, while 44% gave 5-7 hours per week. This is a significant commitment, highlighting that sponsors tend to go above and beyond to support the families they welcome.
The 4 personal gains that sponsors reported feeling most strongly were ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Fulfilment’, ‘Sense of community’ and ‘Pride’. 100% of respondents reported an increase in Satisfaction, Fulfilment and Sense of Community, while 89% reported an increase in Pride. On a scale of 0-5, where 0 = no gain and 5 = lots of gain, more than three quarters of respondents rated the increase in Satisfaction and Fulfilment that they had gained from sponsoring refugees as 4-5, while more than two thirds rated the increase in Sense of Community that they had experienced as being 4-5.
The four areas which sponsors reported having learnt most about were: ‘a culture other than your own’; ‘the challenges faced by people with low levels of English in the UK’; ‘life on a low income in your area’; and ‘local statutory and voluntary services in your local area’. Across all 4 of these areas, 100% of respondents reported an increase in their knowledge. More than half of respondents rated their increase in knowledge about a culture other than their own as a 4 or 5, where 0 = no learning and 5 = lots of learning.
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Read all news and insight from our initiatives
See coverage of Reset UK in the press and media
Find out how Community Sponsorship helps refugee families in need build a new life in the UK with confidence and dignity.
How do I sponsor a refugee family? How does the process work? Reset is here to support you every step of the way.
We’ve designed toolkits to make it easy for you if you’re involved as a lead sponsor or a local authority.
Wherever you are on the fulfilling and thrilling journey through Community Sponsorship, we have training courses, videos, articles and more, all designed to help your group and the family you support.
From drop-in sessions to UK-wide networking events, we bring together people and professionals involved in all stages of the Community Sponsorship journey.
Make a direct difference in the world by getting involved with your nearest Community Sponsorship group – or starting one up yourself!
Make an extraordinary difference to the lives of people who have lost everything by signing up to our (free) Landlords for Refugees register.
Not everyone can donate their time, so if you are choosing to donate money today instead or as well as, thank you. Your generosity is vital to the work we do support community-led welcome of refugees.
Help others by sharing your account. Why were you attracted to community-led welcome? What worked, what did you learn, what has the experience been like for you?
Reset empowers volunteers to welcome refugees into communities across the UK. Find out about us and the kinds of programmes we’ve been involved with.
Research, monitoring and evaluation are essential for making evidence-based decisions that will support Community Sponsorship to grow and flourish.
Sponsoring a refugee family is a significant responsibility. We advocate for Community Sponsors to ensure that they are properly supported throughout their journey.
Our advocacy focuses on representing the views of Community Sponsors to the Home Office to support them in implementing the necessary operational changes.
We also represent the views of Community Sponsors to other key stakeholders, including Local Authorities, international organisations, the wider resettlement field, housing providers and financial institutions. We also use our voice to campaign on policies affecting refugees. We are members of the Together With Refugees coalition, campaigning for a more humane approach to people seeking protection in the UK.
