Courage, strength and solidarity: Lewisham charity invites you to celebrate Refugee Week

“This is an opportunity for the community to step away from these labels of migrant and refugee or asylum seeker and be recognised for who they are.

They are our neighbours, they are leaders, they are artists. They are regular human beings," says Meetra Qutb, Campaigns and Communications Manager with LRMN.

Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network (LRMN) helps migrants integrate in the borough with legal advice and material support.

From their offices in Evelyn Street, LRMN provides advice and support to migrants and refugees with issues such as housing, visas and welfare, from Monday to Friday.

In emergency cases, it also provides food parcels and hardship funds for people facing destitution. According to their figures, since the start of 2026 they have supported over 3,000 people from 139 different countries (with 399 of the clients not specifying their nationality)

On Saturday 13 June, LRMN will host an event titled "United in Courage: Voices of Strength and Solidarity" at the Mulberry Centre, New Cross to mark Refugee Week 2026.

“Courage is more than just a concept for us” Meetra Qutb tells Salamander.

“For our community, it takes courage to build a life in a new country while navigating this hostile environment for migrants.”

The event will offer workshops dedicated to employability ( hosted by Facework), migrants’ rights during raids (by Lewisham Anti-Raid) and women’s health ( by NAZ Project London) as well as choir performances, art workshops, film screenings and stalls from various other community organisations.

LRMN has enjoyed a close relationship with the council since its foundation. It currently chairs the Lewisham Migration Forum (LMF), an organisation that works with the council to implement the Borough of Sanctuary agenda.

LMF’s steering committee also includes other charities and institutions such as Action for Refugees in Lewisham (AFRIL), Facework, Lewisham College, Red Ribbon Living Well Project, Refugee Council, as well as four Sanctuary Ambassadors - people with lived experience as refugees and asylum seekers.

First Borough of Sanctuary

Lewisham was the first Borough of Sanctuary recognised by national charity ‘City of Sanctuary’ in 2021.

As part of this project, the Labour-controlled council formally committed to resettling vulnerable refugee families from Syria, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict, providing care to unaccompanied child asylum seekers, and giving advice and support to people who have come from abroad to enable them to rebuild their lives in the borough.

The Green Party takeover of the council at last month's elections does not seem to put this relationship in jeopardy. Councillor Hau-Yu Tam, now cabinet member for Community, Sanctuary and Healing, worked for LRMN before the local elections.

AFRIL was also recently nominated as the mayor’s charity by new mayor Liam Shrivastava.

"We met (the cabinet member) at the Lewisham Migration Forum after the elections and we will definitely meet again to discuss our plans for the borough and how we can support our community", Qutb says.

Campaigns - five basics and access to public services

Besides their direct support of refugees and their role in steering the council’s sanctuary strategy, LRMN also campaigns to create a more welcoming environment for migrants, including the fight for the five basics in temporary accommodation and the fight against exclusion of people with No Recourse to Public Funds status from public services.

Qutb points out that members of the migrant and refugee community are involved in the campaigning.

"We organise training sessions for them, they campaign with us, they help us advocate for their rights. They are at the front of everything we do".

As many charities struggle to secure funding and grants at the moment, Meetra Qutb feels that this situation might put extra pressure on the Network.

“We are trying to apply for funding grants but we find it very competitive. In particular with the new anti-immigration law proposals, there will be more people needing our support and it will be hard to have the capacity, the team members, to support so many people”.

In addition to the looming threat of new anti-immigration laws and the rise of the far right, Meetra Qutb points to another issue that affects this vulnerable community: they were recently targeted by scammers.

Using easily available information, scammers impersonated LRMN employees and contacted their clients directly.

“The good thing is that we have a good relationship with our community that alerted us to it right away”, Qutb says.

The charity has now taken extra security measures to prevent it from happening again. “We removed the team members page from the website and are more strict on how we show pictures and videos with people’s faces.

"We have organised sessions on digital security for the community members so they are safe while navigating online. They can now recognise phishing and scam calls easily”.

LRMN works together with Code Your Future to provide training in online safety for the community. Code Your Future will also be offering employability advice at Saturday's event.

Find out more about the event: United in Courage, Voices of Strength and Solidary and reserve your spot.

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