PLEASE SAVE THE DATE: As a registered charity, KCRS must hold a general meeting of its members annually. Our first Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held on

DATE: Monday 17/June 2019

TIME: evening – 6:00 for 6:30

VENUE: All Saints church, 14-16 Market Place, Kingston upon Thames KT1 1JP

The purpose of an AGM is for KCRS members to note the charity’s annual accounts and annual report and to elect trustees. Since this will be our first AGM all of the current trustees will retire from office (but may choose to stand for election alongside any other members who are nominated.) A formal call for nominations for election to the Board of Trustees will be issued later.

MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY: KCRS member Anna Gorrell has volunteered to take on the role of membership secretary. Thank you Anna! You may see her name in future correspondence.

And on the subject of membership, if you belong to a church, mosque, synagogue, temple or other faith group then please consider whether your organisation might like to become an ORGANISATIONAL MEMBER of KCRS. Organisations pay £100 per year for membership. Our hope is to have enough organisational members to cover running costs so that donations can all be used for the purpose of resettling refugee families.

OUR SOCIAL EVENING in January 2019 was an enjoyable event. Members and supporters were able to chat over light refreshments, put questions to the KCRS trustees and listen to a wonderful performance of oud (Arabic lute) music by Rihab Azar - a leading Syrian musician.

FUNDRAISING: Thanks to donations from members and supporters, including some very generous personal and organisational donations, our available funds are now close to £15,000. This is well above the £9,000 minimum that the Home Office requires us to have to hand. We can’t say for certain whether it is more than we shall actually need for the first family to be resettled since a lot depends on, for example, the amount of refurbishment needed by the accommodation that is available for them and whether or not their facility with English is such that they need extensive professional interpreting services. In the best case scenario a good portion of these funds will be available to go towards resettling a second family.

PREPARING A RESETTLEMENT PLAN: We have completed our detailed resettlement plan. Before we can submit this to the Home office for their approval we need the approval of Kingston Council. KCRS trustees recently met with Council officers to discuss our plan. The Council has not asked for changes to the plan but has asked that we also prepare an itemised budget and a detailed listing, with estimated dates, of all the activities included in the plan. We have completed first drafts of these two additional items and therefore hope to soon have the Council’s approval.

FINDING ACCOMMODATION: We recently heard from a KCRS supporter of a local charity that might be in a position to offer one of the properties that they have available for rent. Unfortunately, we have discovered that this charity’s trust deeds include some restrictions on who can be taken on as a tenant and these restrictions may mean that we cannot use this offer of accommodation. Finding accommodation continues to be a challenge and will become urgent once we have Home Office approval of our funding and planning.

Thank you for your continuing interest and support.