Supporting refugees

AN Edinburgh church has opened its doors to Ukrainian refugees staying temporarily in the city, providing a safe place for them to gather and showing them the sights.

As of mid-May there were around 600 refugees in the city, a changing group accommodated in hotels at the airport until they can be moved to permanent homes elsewhere in Scotland.

The City of Edinburgh Council has asked St Cuthbert’s Parish Church to act as a safe hub in the city centre at weekends.

The church and its partners are also putting together a programme of Sunday afternoon visits, supported by volunteers not just from St Cuthbert’s but also from other parishes who provided interpreters, the school pupils who help set up the church’s homeless outreach, and Father Vasyl Kren from Edinburgh’s Ukrainian Catholic Church, Our Lady of Pochayiv and St Andrew.

On Sunday May 8, a group of 45 refugees were accompanied on a visit to Edinburgh Castle, and the following weekend they were taken to Holyrood Palace.

Minister, the Rev Peter Sutton, who has also hosted Ukrainian refugees briefly at his manse, said: “I have been asked by the council and the third sector agencies to help provide a secure hub in the city centre for the refugees in the transit hotels out at the airport. This particular group changes on a regular basis as they move onto the more permanent homes, many heading over to the west of Scotland.

“It is at the weekends when the council need the most help with this particular group as many of them like to come into the city centre.

“The council has now provided travel passes and is using St Cuthbert’s as a safe place from which the refugees can gather and explore the city.

“To date this involves about 25 refugees on a Sunday afternoon coming into the city centre. Along with the Council, Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council, and Sabine Chalmers of Scottish Faiths Action for Refugees, we are trying to put together a Sunday afternoon programme. We meet at the start of the week to plan for the next Sunday afternoon.

“Local contacts in the parish and outside have been most generous in supporting our efforts, namely the Castle, the Caledonian Hotel, the Van Gogh experience in Festival Square and the Zoo.”

He added that the Castle trip was ‘an uplifting afternoon, and the support agencies helping the refugees ensured that the logistics worked well with coaches from the airport dropping off in St Cuthbert’s kirkyard’.

Prior to that, on April 23, St Cuthbert’s hosted an art auction and sale in aid of the Ukrainian Humanitarian Appeal. Pupils from James Gillespie’s High School and Loretto School donated artwork for the sale, which raised over £3000. ¤