Who’s at your table? The Standard’s Winter Campaign

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show.

0:21Pierce the surface of any one of us, and either we or our ancestors will have been displaced at some point and will have relied on the kindness of others, whether they're charities or complete strangers. Who would have thought, for example, that the co-founder of Marx and Spencer, one day in the 1880s, he had to flee Eastern Europe for his life. He ended up coming here, co-founding Marx and Spencer. Who would have thought that the founder of Lush, Mark Constantine, was once homeless? But first... The suffering driven by the war in Sudan. A conflict that has now created the worst humanitarian crisis on record.

1:05Over 13 million people need aid and 12 million people have been displaced. We will stop what is a threat to our national security. We will stop the boats. When it comes to temporary accommodation, particularly for London's children, I am really furious about the impact that this is having on our kids. These figures are heartbreaking.

1:38the so-called migrant crisis is something we're used to covering on this podcast as well as homelessness in the capital as the number of families living in temporary accommodation in england reaches a record high but today's episode is a little different ahead of this festive season the standards winter campaign is asking who's at your table In partnership with Comic Relief, we're raising funds to help the three groups that are the most vulnerable in society. People who have become homeless, people who are struggling with food insecurity, and people who have been forced to flee their homes and have come to the UK seeking asylum.

2:21You just heard The Standards Campaign's editor, David Cohen, and he joins me now. Our campaign cover star is Rita Ora. Listeners will know her as a famous singer-songwriter, but she hasn't always lived a life of glamour and showbiz, has she? She came here from Kosovo with her parents when she was just a very young child. They fled some of the violence that was taking place against ethnic Albanians. And she says that what happened with her parents at that very early age in her life has formed her, it's defined her. She says, growing up as a child refugee shaped everything about who I am. When her parents fled to Kosovo to escape persecution, they gave up everything for safety and for a new start in the UK.

3:07They had to build their lives from scratch. She describes how her mum was a psychiatrist back in Kosovo, but when she came to the UK, she had to learn English and retrain all over, and how her dad worked long nights to make sure the family had a future. Today, Rita is widely celebrated, But the thing that most sticks with her is how she was treated when she first arrived, when she was a young person who nobody knew, just like so many others who come here. And she says, the people who welcomed us made us feel accepted and part of something bigger. That kindness stays with me. It taught me that belonging isn't something you're giving.

3:45It's something we create together. And for the campaign, you've spoken to several vulnerable people. You have overcome enormous adversity. I was particularly struck by Leila's story. Can you tell us more about her? So Leila came here just a year ago. She's 19. She grew up in a part of Yemen where young girls are forbidden from going to school. There's about one and a half million girls in Yemen who are not in school who should be. Her father was a teacher and he taught her at home. In my community, girls have a limited, so you can't get out from house, you can't make friends. I never got to school, so I couldn't make friends.

4:23I can't tell you I have friends from my childhood because I didn't have no one. But when she was 14, her brothers and others came to her and said, well, it's now time to get married. And her father was her protector from this, but they persisted. And when the father continued to protect her, they shot him. He basically died in her arms. And she describes how she then fled Yemen, came here, eventually got here, and turned herself into a police station where she was asthmatic, had barely eaten, spoke very little English. And she was given asylum within four months. But then at that moment, she then faced being homeless.

5:07She had just come out of surgery for reversing the female genital mutilation that had happened to her when she was just five years old. And so she was in no place to find a home for herself. I was just crying. I don't know what to do. I was taking mood medicine for sleep. I was crying. Even if you say hi to me, I will start crying. You don't know what happened to me. I cry and I keep crying. I was so scared. And I was like, how am I going to stay on the street? And my asthma got worse and worse. Yeah, I didn't know anyone here. And I don't have family here or like someone related. Luckily, she turned to this charity called New Horizon Youth Center.

5:43This is one of the charities that we are supporting with the funds that we are raising for this campaign. And they not only found her a house, but they helped her integrate into society. They helped get her English lessons. Today, she's not only done two ESOL courses, but she is actually teaching English. She volunteers at several charities and she is hoping to become a doctor one day because the death of her father still obviously was such a profound thing in her life and she wants to be able to one day work for Doctors Without Borders and save lives. I've been coming to New Horizons maybe one year and for me it's a family because I feel they are my family.

6:27Before I came here I always feel so lonely. I feel I belong to somewhere. It's a crucial junction where people are vulnerable. The people who are homeless do not stay homeless. They get helped and they move on and they contribute to society. The refugees who are forced to flee their homes do not stay in a helpless position. They're given the right help at the right time. They only want to integrate and contribute. Those organizations and people that are really closest to the issues and the communities they serve, they always have the best solutions because they understand local needs. They can act quickly.

7:01They're embedded in communities. They're on the front line of delivering those vital services. They see the issues firsthand. The issue is many of those grassroots organizations are really facing challenges. They're small. There's an unstable economic environment that we're all operating in. So the resources are stretched. Demand is rising. There's so much need out there and they don't always have the capacity. So that's why it's so important that an organization like Comic Relief working in partnership with the centre, that we can really raise money to support those grassroots organisations. And specifically for this appeal, you know, we're going to be supporting local organisations in London and across the UK, tackling those areas.

7:39And we think that they're really best placed to drive change. This is Samir Patel, CEO of Comic Relief. I began by asking Samir about the idea of home. Is it a place or a feeling? For some people, it's a physical space. For some people, they haven't had that support of family. And it's more about, you know, kindness or other people or rituals or small things that help you feel grounded again. Ultimately, it's about a simple feeling that you belong somewhere and you have something and you have something of your own. And I think that's incredibly powerful for so many people out there. It does come back to a sense of family, a sense of belonging and a sense of safety.

8:18And can you tell me more about the message behind who's at your table? So it's an invitation to think about connection, about empathy and community during a season when many of us naturally come together with the people we care about. And it's about acknowledging that for some people, winter is incredibly isolating and that a simple gesture of support, a simple questioning, simple welcome can really make a huge difference. So that's the idea behind the name is that everyone deserves to feel they have a place somewhere they feel safe, valued, seen and included. Just to put it into context, one in six households are going hungry and far too many people, young people, families, those rebuilding their lives after displacement are facing hardship, but are facing it alone.

9:03So I really think together we can all make a real difference by shining a light on these issues and really bringing people together to care. It doesn't take that much, probably less than people think. You know, a small donation can really mean someone having a warm bed tonight, a hot meal tomorrow, or the feeling that they haven't been forgotten and they're not alone. Just three pounds, that can help rescue and deliver enough surplus food to provide eight meals to vulnerable people in London. Ten pounds can really help provide a child who's been forced to leave their home with the gift for them to open around Christmas, such as a fun game or just some warm winter essentials.

9:42The main thing I would ask people to think about is getting behind the campaign, spreading the word and donating. You can go to comicalief.com forward slash winter. Like I said, it doesn't take much to really make a difference to someone's life. Let's go to an ad break. Stay tuned to hear how Comic Relief's mission has evolved over 40 years and why it's so important to dispel the myths that surround society's most vulnerable people. We'll see you back here in just a moment.

10:16Welcome back. David and Samir, migration can be a complex topic and there are many misconceptions about people who are displaced and also the stigma of being homeless persists. What's the truth behind some of these myths? Firstly, people see rough sleepers and they think that's the only homeless people there are. But there is a huge number of people in inappropriate or temporary housing. That number is at a record all-time high, actually. More than half the people who are in homeless accommodation or temporary housing, if you like, or sofa surfing, which is another way that people are homeless, are children.

10:56That's the first myth. The second is that we turn to immigrants, that the UK does not need immigrants. There are currently 120 ,000 full-time vacancies in the NHS that we need to fill, and we cannot fill them without immigrants. There is also this idea that most asylum seekers falsely claim to have fled danger and that there's no basis for their claim. Well, the facts are that around 70 % of UK asylum claims are granted either in the initial decision stage or on appeal, and this is not something that is easy to do. So 70 % at least are regarded as completely valid. And then the fourth myth, everyone is arriving here on small boats.

11:37The actual numbers show that 96 % of immigrants to the UK do not come in small boats. We know that this can be complex topics that interweave each other. They're all intersectional. And there's lots of debates about this. At the end of the day, though, this is about human stories. You know, this is about the shared humanity that we can all have in helping people out who are facing a hard time. And so we know that many of them have kind of left everything behind and really faced significant challenges. And so ultimately, this is about dignity. Everyone deserves a chance for safety, dignity, and that chance to really start again.

12:16From our experience of funding work to support refugees and people seeking asylum, so many people are seeking safety and stability. And really, people just want to become a part of new communities and rebuild their lives. And when it comes to homelessness, it's also a complex issue. And, you know, many people who find themselves homeless often face really, really tough circumstances that were never part of their plan. Things like a family breakdown, a sudden job loss, conflict, trauma. These are situations that can happen to anyone. And so it's really important that we all see the common humanity.

12:50These aren't people who don't want to work. These are just people actually who have had tough circumstances that actually could happen to more of us than we think who are trying to rebuild their lives. Samir, Comic Relief began 40 years ago on Christmas Day. Tell me about your early beginnings and how your mission has evolved. That was sort of broadcasting live from a refugee camp in Sudan. And we asked the British public then to help people fleeing hunger and danger. And so the world has really changed a lot since then. But our core mission hasn't, which is really helping people find safety, dignity and hope when they need it most.

13:25What has evolved a bit is the way we do that. So today we work closely with really brilliant grassroots organizations who are local, embedded in communities across the UK and internationally who really know their communities best. Through all of those years throughout our history, we found that even in the darkest moments, we can all find a way to get through them if we come together with hope and compassion. And that's why this winter appeal matters so much. And David, do you have a final message for listeners? The call really at this point to tap into that shared humanity, that shared vulnerability that we can either know that we've experienced in our lives or if we're lucky enough not to have experienced it to that extent, we would be able to go back in the history of our families and know that there were others who did and who did rely on organizations or people who did not know that.

14:22know them to help out at that crucial junction in their lives. So that's what this is about, raising funds to help those charities that brilliantly help these people get on their feet.

14:40And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. we'll be back here tomorrow morning we'll see you then