THE Launceston Refugee Support Group held its second meeting recently — with a good turnout and new members joining. The group is now looking ahead to upcoming informative talks over the next couple of months.

The latest meeting was held on April 27, at Jericho’s, with the group’s ultimate aim to try and support two refugee families to come and live in Launceston.

Frances Tippett is one of the instigators of the Launceston group and took inspiration from the Bude Refugee Support Group, which has recently received Home Office approval to welcome a refugee family to Bude.

Frances said of the latest meeting: “It was really great, four new people joined. I feel like the momentum is growing really nicely.

“We talked about what we do next, get some of the practical stuff up and running like bank accounts, and we are starting applications for charity commission status.

“More broadly what we are wanting to do at the moment is focus on awareness raising across the community. We don’t want people to feel it’s imposed on the community. We want to do work to engage people and get more people involved. For us it’s about making it a whole community piece of work.

“We are really keen to look in the longer term to see if we can support two families to settle here in Launceston. In the meantime, for the refugee camps in Syrian and Europe we are trying to push up collections of targeted things that need to go out there, trying to push up local donations.”

A list of what items are needed and how to donate is available on the Launceston Refugee Support Group Facebook page, or by contacting Carolyn Burch on 01566 785171 or Rob Butler on 07812 585002.

The next group meeting, on May 25, starting 7.30pm at Jericho’s, will hear from Faraday Fearnside (Open Hearts Open Borders) and her work in helping aid to go out to camps in Syria, Rachel Alexandra, who has delivered aid in a French camp, and a representative of the Cornwall Islamic Centre.

On June 29, the group will hear what is undoubtedly set to be a moving talk from Syrian Baraa Ehssan Kouja. Baraa. He is a graduate of the University of Exeter, and founded the charity ‘From Syria With Love’. This will start at 12.30pm and run throughout the day and evening.

The charity helps raise funds and awareness about the refugee crisis.

Frances said as part of his talks, Baraa brings and displays artwork by children in refugee camps.

Frances added: “It’s such an incredible issue globally. All of us can be thinking about what that means for us and what we can do practically — nowhere is too small.”