Community & Belonging | How Host Derby Changes the Lives of Refugees Through Emergency Accommodation | Part 3

The third and final in our 3-part blog series with a spotlight on Host Derby. Einir, Head of Delivery, shares how the project creates community and a sense of belonging for refugees who have been forced to leave their own families behind.

“The impact of Host Derby is different for every Guest I think. But the one common thread, I would say, is a sense of belonging and being part of a family. Having dinner with others around the table, going through that process of congregating together, preparing food together, and eating together. And the washing up afterwards.

Most of our Guests do not experience that prior to being hosted because many of them are single guys, who’ve gone ahead of their families back home in North Africa or the Middle East, in search of safety. Often, these guys have been on the road for months or even years. Then, they’ve reached the UK and they’ve been living in temporary accommodation with other single guys. They haven’t experienced a sense of home or family for a really long time.

Guests don’t necessarily join Hosts every day for dinner, but even if it’s twice a week, it serves as a reminder of home, family, and conversation: “How was your day? What are you thinking about? What are you carrying at the moment?”

That makes me think about a young man who we were able to host just before Christmas. He had been made homeless after he was granted refugee status. He met the Host online and that afternoon we took him to their house, and he was with them in the run up to Christmas.

A week into his placement, we had a placement review to see how things were going, on Zoom. The Hosts wanted to make it very clear that Christmas was about to happen, and that was a very special holiday for them as a family. And they absolutely wanted the Guest to know that he was invited to that day.

We went on to ask the Guest, “What’s going well with this Host family? Are there any challenges?” The Guest was only in his early 20s, but he became very silent and I was looking at him on Zoom, and he became very emotional. I think, being hosted by a couple who are probably a similar age to his parents, just reminded him of home.

He was so grateful to be hosted, but underneath there's a lot of emotion going on. Being in the home, being with people who are interested and interacting with you regularly, knowing that when you go home, someone will be there to say hello to you and will say, “Do you want a cup of tea? How was your day?” That's unfamiliar to Guests and is a wonderful feeling, but also overwhelming.

The following day, he came to the Upbeat office and asked me to help him with something, and I assumed it was Universal Credit or something important and boring. But no, he pulled out of his bag a Christmas card and it had “to my family” written on it, and he wanted me to help him write a message that was suitable, for his Hosts. It was very touching.

It was one of those moments that you don’t really think about when you’re running a project. You’re dealing with homelessness, trying to solve a large-scale problem. But when you place somebody, it turns out the impact goes far beyond the actual placement, for both the Hosts and the Guests.

I was doing a placement review yesterday with a couple who have been hosting for a couple of months now. The Host said to me, “We've just benefited so much from having this Guest stay with us. You didn't explain that in the induction. We had no idea that there would be such tremendous benefit to us, in terms of cultural understanding and being educated.”

This was huge for their Guest to hear. It’s often a strange power dynamic; Guests feel like they owe their Hosts everything. This Guest in particular was an educated man, who has a law degree in his home country. For him to sit there, usually feeling like he has nothing to give and he is just indebted for the rest of his life to his Hosts, to hear them speak in that way was very, very empowering for him.

Host Derby is never one-way.

The world opens up when you have someone from a completely different continent living with you. You get to know their family, because they’re Facetiming their children that they’ve left behind, or their aging parents, and their family begins to feel like your family.”

For more information about Host Derby, you can head to upbeatcommunities.org/hosting.

Or, come along to our Hosting Information Evening on Zoom, on Monday 12th February at 7pm, where you’d be welcome to ask any questions you may have. Please email us to let us know you’re coming, and so we can send you the Zoom link.