Cardiff Destitution Network has recently released a statement to its supporters on the last year of action.
“It’s not been an easy year at the Cardiff Destitution Network, while we are grateful to the Welsh Refugee Council for sharing their office space with us, we’ve struggled to keep on top of administration and publicity, and as we are all volunteers, haven’t had enough time to keep the website up-to-date with reports and news. But we’d like to bring this statement out today to keep you in the loop about what we’ve been up to, ShareDYDD success stories and our future aims.
Even though it’s often been a struggle to get this network off the ground and find hosts at very short notice for most of the people we meet, we’ve been growing slowly and are more than pleased with the successes and results experienced together over the last few months. We have already hosted around 20 people in the Cardiff area! And everyone that we’ve helped to house temporarily has touched us by their stories of hardship and hope and gratitude, and we’re more dedicated than ever to help people get off the streets and under a roof, helping where local services haven’t, and giving people the chance to take a decision about their future that sleeping rough just cannot bring.
In June this year we held a sleep-out in Newport as part of Refugee Week Wales, and even though it was hit with some problems at the place we planned to stay, it was a great success for us as it was our first event, and brought many new people together who hadn’t previously met or taken any action on destitution. It helped to bring many of us together and raise our voice in Newport. We’ve since been talking to N&DRSG about working together on destitution in some way in the future, and one of us is going to attend regular networking meetings in Newport that are soon, and will use this forum to put destitution on the agenda in Newport.
We put a lot of effort into our event in July with Dave Smith of Boaz trust, Manchester, and was pleased to welcome some of our new hosts from Barry, and to hear some emotive stories of hope and enriching of lives from some of our existing ShareDYDD hosts. The event was a success as it raised our profile, gave us the confidence to start working on our planned speaking tour, and brought in our first ever donations.
ShareDYDD was recently mentioned in the Permaculture Works newsletter put out by Paramaethu Cymru. While this in itself didn’t generated any immediate offers of hosting, it’s helped to further raise our profile and we’re grateful to Paramaethu Cymru for the publicity and the prospects of working closer together in the future.
We have great plans for the next few months, that include a meeting tomorrow in Cardiff with other organisations to build the network, and a speaking tour of as many places of worship in Cardiff and the south Wales area as we can manage.
We thank everyone again for their all their support and as we plan to grow, and expand into new areas of support, hope that as more people hear of us, we can continue to support the community around us in every way possible. And as we highlight the need for a fairer system and a more equal society, look to see more communities working in solidarity, until no-one is cast aside and marginalised. The values that bring hope and peace to the world can always help to build a society where people support each other in times of need, we have that as our aim, and we need more people who agree with us to help make that happen.
You are welcome to all our future meetings, or just get in touch with us with any ideas, offers or suggestions. We are there for everyone. Thank you for being there with us.”
The next meeting we have is tomorrow, Wednesday 8th October, at 2pm at the Welsh Refugee Council. All other meetings will go on our Upcoming events page.
