The Afghanistan and Central Asian Association was founded by Dr Nooralhaq Nasimi, who fled the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1999 and came to the UK seeking asylum with his young family. Since it was founded in 2001, the ACAA’s mission has been to reduce the isolation felt by the refugee community and to promote and secure human rights in Afghanistan itself. Its key services are its ESOL for integration classes, its legal advice clinic and its women’s project which promotes women’s rights and a safe space for women refugees. In addition to this, the ACAA is a community centre, through which Afghans living in London are able to make connections, celebrate their culture and feel a sense of belonging. In 2018 the ACAA was awarded the Queens Award for its services to the community. The ACAA has recently been operating grassroots human rights and legal advice centres run by Afghans. This work has attempted to promote Afghan empowerment and a sustainable charitable sector in the country in the context of the dominance of large foreign NGOs.
Due to the recent arrival of many Afghan refugees to the UK, we have been greatly involved in providing humanitarian assistance for Afghan refugees. Many refugees have arrived with the bare minimum of possessions and are lacking basic needs such as toiletries, clothing and essential supplies whilst they are staying in hotels.
Over the last few weeks, we have been collecting, sorting and distributing donations across London and the South East. We have set up an essentials pop-up shop, at our centre in Feltham, whereby refugees can place an order online for their specific needs, clothes/shoes sizes and items, which we are then able distribute to them.
Throughout each day, as well as collecting and packing orders, we receive more donations which we then organise and distribute to specific areas of the pop-up shop ready to be collected for future orders. The system works well for us and has come such a long way in what’s only been a short space of time. When delivering donations, refugees and hotels have been pleased with the system we’ve created and we only hope to make it more efficient so that we can deliver as many essential donations as we can to those in need.
Due to the huge volume of donations, needs of refugees and deliveries required we are urgently looking for volunteers to help out at our centre in Feltham.
