Charity of the month: Refugee Women of Bristol

Every other month at Simpleweb Studio One, we select a local charity to raise money for by doing the thing we do best – eating cake. Luckily, with happiness officer Georgie on board to bake us delicious delights every week, and the team donating a quid per slice scoffed, raising cash is quite simply a piece of cake.

Back in September, the team chose Chandos House – Bristol’s only remaining residential treatment centre for drug and alcohol addiction in men. At the time the charity was running a fundraising campaign to keep the centre open after facing severe funding cuts. Despite a tonne of hard work from everyone involved in Chandos House, they didn’t reach their funding goal and have sadly now closed for good.

Meanwhile the team at Studio One raised £130 from cake sales and have since decided to donate this directly to a new homeless shelter that has opened in St Anne’s, Bristol, offering 30 homeless people a warm and safe place to sleep during winter 2018 to 2020.

Refugee Women of Bristol

This month, until the end of January Studio One will be raising money for Refugee Women of Bristol – the only multi-ethnic, multi-faith organisation which specifically targets the needs of refugee women in Bristol.

They are directly governed by women of the refugee and asylum-seeking community and provide services to disenfranchised groups over and above the generic category of ‘refugee’, and routinely reach cohorts of women that other service-providers overlook or are unable to access.

Each year Refugee Women of Bristol supports around 300 refugee and asylum-seeking women and their pre-school children with everything from education and training to childcare, advice and advocacy.