Kevin Culliney
Big Pot 2
Fundraising for The Lockton Charitable Association
Story
Big Pot 2
On 6th August 2021 the Taliban took the first provincial City in Afghanistan and by 15th August they were at the gates of Kabul. During this time over 100,000 Afghans managed to escape in the airlift with an undisclosed number fleeing by other means to join the 2.5m of their countrymen who had left their home country during the 20 years of war. Another 3.5m Afghans have been forced to leave their homes during the war and are therefore displaced in their own country.
The UK had around 12,000 Afghan refugees living here prior to the withdrawal of troops and around 8,000 have arrived here in recent weeks. Of these 50% are children, 30% women and 20% men. Currently 6000 of the 8000 are housed in temporary hotel accommodation. Most have absolutely nothing beyond the clothes and few belongings they were able to take with them.
As a part of Big Pot 2 we will be actively helping the refugees, delivering much needed clothing, toiletries and books. We will also be helping with reading, form filling, education projects, sorting and simply helping families adapt to life in the UK.
Last year you did a fantastic job supporting the Big Pot initiative aimed at helping the homeless. This year we aim to repeat the success and to achieve this we will be working with a couple of charities but our assistance, as last year, will be direct.
Over the next few weeks we hope to bring this to life with some stories from “the field”. At the end of the day we are talking about frightened men, women and children who just need to know someone cares and to give them a start in their new life.
Thanks as ever for taking the time.