Another year at Oasis comes to a close and what a year 2023 has been! We have undergone several big changes - saying goodbye to our CEO and founder, Reynette, buying our building and celebrating our 15th anniversary. Oasis is very much a collective effort between everyone in our community from staff to volunteers, partners, and clients. It is this collaborative spirit that allows us to provide far reaching and diverse support to the people who visit us. 

And it has resulted in some pretty impressive numbers this year:

• We welcomed roughly 3,700 people seeking sanctuary over 20,600 visits. Our integration team delivered casework support for 1,100 across 3,945 appointments.

• A whopping 39,873 nutritious lunchtime meals were served at Oasis. This has remained a lifeline to asylum seekers and refugees who experience financial hardship as the result of the cost of living crisis and the poor financial support they receive. 

• An average of 30 weekly activities were delivered ranging from art and music activities to mental health support and cultural trips. Every week, 25 hours of free English and Welsh classes were delivered.

• Empowering and restoring the dignity of our beneficiaries is important to us. We distributed 657 toiletries bags with essential supplies.

• Our partnership with Vodafone has allowed us to help people cross the digital divide, providing 1690 SIMs to asylum seekers.

• Over 280 volunteers were involved at Oasis.

The New Year will continue to be one of change and we look forward to welcoming our new CEO, Susie Ventris-Field, to Oasis. Here’s to a brilliant 2024 of growth where we continue to build and develop our relationships within our community. As always, we will endeavour to remain a warm and welcoming space for asylum seekers and refugees, empowering and restoring the dignity of individuals seeking sanctuary.