Local Welcome: how did the magic start?

Written by: Ben Pollard

Posted on: 28 March 2024 (during Ben’s last week at Local Welcome)

Introduction

Local Welcome was started by Ben Pollard in 2015. It was the response to both a crisis, and a question. The crisis was 2 million people fleeing the Syrian civil war. People in the UK wanted to help, but many didn’t know how. The question was, ‘could we connect people in ways that would outlast the crisis?’. 

We wanted to learn if atomised individuals, with good intentions, and diverse cultures, could form new communities that would live on, and potentially form a new kind of institution. A place for individuals to connect, act together, and learn to trust, belong, lead, and make change. 

How it started

Before starting Local Welcome, I had worked as a community organiser with Citizens UK in the UK and briefly in the US for the 2012 election. The work of organising involves recruiting community leaders, like teachers and vicars, into alliances of trust where they learn to build power, together, for their common good. My last organising campaign led to 50 local authorities across the UK pledging publicly to resettle 50 people each from Syria. At that time, the UK had resettled only 254 refugees from the region. I left Citizens UK at the start of 2015, proud of what we’d achieved, but exhausted by the effort. 

In September 2015 a photograph of the 5-year-old boy Allan Khurdi created a new wave of public compassion. It was also a stark reminder that my family had safely crossed the same sea when I was 5 years old. We had moved from Liverpool to Algeria when I was 2 years old, but Islamist tension and family illness forced us to leave. I had developed asthma and my mum’s eardrum burst. We couldn’t fly, so we crossed the Mediterranean on a boat. We were safe, but still forced to move, and unsettled for months before starting a new life in Toxteth, inner city Liverpool. Three years later my dad joined the army as a chaplain, and I was sent to boarding school. The Gulf war took its toll on him and our family. War is real. I’ve felt it in my bones. 

When the photo of Allan Khurdi went viral I called one of my closest Syrian friends, Nasser Yousef. He introduced me to a young dentist from Damascus called Eiad. I introduced Eiad to some journalists and helped him share his story in support of the campaign I had recently left behind. After a long day of interviews, Eiad came back to my flat for dinner. I asked what support he and his friends needed. He wanted help to improve his English and translate his qualifications so he could work as a dentist again. I also knew that the press would only be supportive for a few weeks, but that meeting a refugee could sustain people’s support even when the public narrative changed. 

We didn’t have time to make elaborate plans, so we just started with what we had. Eiad and Nasser used Facebook and WhatsApp groups to start organising Syrian refugees across the UK. We invited groups of about 12 Syrians to meet in cafes in 12 cities and I convinced Starbucks to host the groups and give us free coffee. I then got several campaigns to email about 20K people inviting them to meet some refugees for coffee and help them learn English and find jobs where they could use their skills and start rebuilding their lives. Months later, the groups moved from cafes to church halls. Sharing coffee became sharing meals. 

I built a website to try and match people up, and nobody used it because I hadn’t asked them what they actually needed. I’d fallen into the ‘let’s build an app’ trap, but at least I’d failed early. 

I needed help thinking about design, not just clever code. At this point my friend James Darling joined the adventure. James had just left his job as the technical architect for the Labour party. On his first week, James went to a meal in Sheffield. A Syrian man called Ahmed sat down next to him and said, ‘So… the home office spelt my name wrong. If I sign the papers to accept my refugee status they might not allow my wife to join me because her name will be different. What should I do?’

It was a heartbreaking moment, and the sort of challenge that our groups still face today, but right then it was frustrating for Ahmed, stressful for James, and not the best way to build trust. 

We realised then that our gatherings needed some structure, and that support is both more effective and more sustainable in the context of a relationship. We thought about asking them to literally solve a puzzle together and we started experimenting. It was Autumn 2016 and the Syrian community in York and Manchester had helped build flood defences. Perhaps we could get people doing that together? 

However, that week I read an article in the New York Times called 36 Questions to fall in Love. I’d started training as an ADHD coach and I was fascinated by compassion-based psychology and social contact theory. The groups had started eating together, but what if they cooked together while answering questions? They didn’t have to fall in love, but perhaps it might change the power dynamic and help people to see each other as complex amazing humans with stories and vulnerabilities, hopes and dreams. Perhaps something so simple might help us build resilient new communities. 

The following month we went back to Sheffield, this time armed with two crepe maker hotplates. We placed them in the middle of a large table and gathered round to make my granny’s drop scone recipe. It was magic. Within a few months we held another meal in London, where a young Syrian lawyer told us, “I’ve been here for 2 years, and this is the first time I forgot I was a refugee”. 

Those first 2 years of scrappy hard work were held together by goodwill, coffee, a few small grants, and a couple of generous fellowships. In 2017 The National Lottery Community Fund  gave us £50K to start growing the team. Since then we’ve raised over £1 million and delivered thousands of hours of social contact between diverse individuals, many at risk of isolation and food insecurity. 

I’m so proud to be leaving behind a clear vision, a renewed mission, passionate leaders, wise, thoughtful and loyal trustees, and an incredibly talented, committed and hard working team  who live out their values in everything they do. It’s been an honour and privilege to lead this team. I’ll miss so much of this work, and I look forward to cheering on from the sidelines. 

If you’d like to stay in touch, please connect with me, and/or follow me on my next steps here.