CWR fundraiser: We Go Further Together
Saturday 28th August - Wednesday November 5th, 2021.
Get involved: https://donate.giveasyoulive.com/campaign/cwr-we-go-further-together
This year Good Chance, in collaboration with world-famous creators of War Horse Handspring Puppet Company, will present its most extraordinary work yet: The Walk. ‘Little Amal’, a 3.5 metre-tall puppet of a young refugee girl, will travel over 8,000km from the Syria-Turkey border all the way to the UK. Representing all displaced children, many separated from their families, Little Amal embodies the urgent message “Don’t forget about us”.
The aim of We Go Further Together is to raise funds for CWR activities supporting refugee families and people seeking asylum in Cheltenham. CWR wants to highlight the plight of refugees and displaced children as embodied by Amal. Are you someone who took up an outdoor activity in 2020? Are you a keen runner, swimmer, cyclist or someone who gets in their 10,000 steps in a day? Then why not challenge yourself and fundraise for CWR while smashing your goal! Collectively let’s see whether we can match the 8,000km that Little Amal will travel from July-November.
Our usual costs cover events and promotional materials, and room hires - but during these times of pandemic and confusion, we greatly appreciate contributions made towards food packages and living expenses (such as bikes and cycling equipment for low-cost travel, clothing, phone top-ups and toiletries) for people seeking asylum, as well as members of refugee families who are struggling with everyday life.
This is the 10th year of the Syrian conflict. According to the UNHCR, more than half of Syria's pre-war population of 22 million have fled their homes. Some 6.7 million are internally displaced, many of them living in camps, while another 5.6 million are registered as refugees abroad. Neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, which are hosting 93% of them, have struggled to cope with one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history. One million Syrian refugee children have been born in exile.
In 2014, the UK government made a commitment to resettle 20,000 people by 2020, with the deadline extended to the end of March 2021. So far, Cheltenham has welcomed over 30 Syrian families. In an update produced by the Refugee Council, as of June 2020 the UK has resettled 20,007 Syrian refugees. In 2019 the government promised to set up a new scheme to resettle some of the world’s most vulnerable refugees, aiming to resettle 5,000 people in the first year of its inception. This new programme is known as the UK Resettlement Scheme and was due to begin in March 2020. However, since 12 March 2020 no refugees were resettled in the UK under any of the refugee resettlement schemes. This is due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
If you’d like to hear more about The Walk with Amal, CWR was joined by sisters Naomi Webb, Executive Director of Good Chance Theatre, and Emily Webb, Head of Poetry at Good Chance Theatre. Watch the talk watch their talk here.
You can get involved by visiting our page on Give as you Live: https://donate.giveasyoulive.com/campaign/cwr-we-go-further-together. Create your own fundraising page, link up your Strava or other distance tracking app, and get moving! We’ll keep you posted regularly to let you know how we’re doing and whether we are keeping up with Little Amal. Get your friends and family involved to show that We Can Go Further Together in support of refugees and displaced children.