We were delighted this week to receive a thank you letter from Bristol Hospitality Network for funding and support provided by BrisDoc through our Community Fund. The BrisDoc Community Fund began four years ago when a number of BrisDoc employees united around a desire to do something to help disadvantaged groups within our local community as well as in developing world, and the idea that BrisDoc could become the platform which could provide the necessary energy and resources.

Bristol Hospitality Network work with and support asylum seekers in the Bristol area. The Community Fund Committee felt that asylum seekers were one of the most needy and vulnerable groups in our society, those least well provided for by either statutory or voluntary services. For more information on the project or to find out how you too could offer support, please visit the website at

www.bristolhospitalitynetwork.wordpress.com

“Dear BrisDoc,

We are delighted to be a recipient of some generous funding this year from your community fund. We work with some of the most vulnerable people in our city; destitute asylum seekers. We provide a safe place to stay in a network of home households across Bristol and South Gloucestershire and a large men’s hostel in Fishponds. We also run a weekly welcome centre on Mondays and do delicious food for events to raise money for the project. We are a small charity running on volunteers plus one paid coordinator 3 days per week. Your donation this year has been a wonderful gift to us as it enables us to plan ahead with a secure funding base for the rest of this year.

We really would love you to come and visit us and see what we get up to! Our welcome centre is one great place to visit (particularly as your funding is paying for, among other things, a delicious lunch for 70 asylum seekers a week at our welcome centre and you could join us for food if you like!) We are open on Mondays 12-3pm at Easton Family Centre, Beaufort Street, Easton, BS5 0SQ (lunch at 1.30pm). Apart from lunch the Centre provides the only advocacy service in Bristol available to destitute asylum seekers, 3 levels of English class, a barber shop, a clothes free shop, arts table and other games.

We are always on the look out for suitable clothes for men (mostly small sizes needed) or arts materials for our emerging art table so feel free to make a mini collection or just pop in to say hello.

If you are not free in the daytime you are welcome to book to come for dinner at the men’s hostel and see how that part of our project works. Your funding is supporting this house over the coming year and we are up for ideas on how we could improve the space for our members (particularly with good physical and mental health in mind) so feel free to make suggestions and we can put your money to work in specific ways (otherwise it will pay for the heating which is less glamorous but essential…)

We would also love to take our members camping again this coming summer as they never leave Bristol. We have some offers of fields to stay in but there will be costs for transport and food etc so this will be another way that this money is used. The last trip was 2 years ago and made a huge difference to people’s wellbeing.

Thank you again!

Bristol Hospitality Network ”