Like U CIO has been officially founded on the 14th of February 2020 (Reg. No. 1187973), but all of our staff have been volunteering in other charities for a few years before. As we have been friends for a long time, we have decided to get together and start a charity supporting European Migrants in our counties. Worcestershire and Herefordshire both have strong European migrants’ presence – and we are the single European migrants focused charity in a 30-mile radius. Our statutory goal is to tackle racism and anti-social behaviour; we want to do this by building relationships, helping everyone solve their problems and making sure they realise that by the end of the day the other person, despite the differences, is just Like U.
Our presence in the community is well established and we perceive ourselves to be the bridge between the minority communities we support and the general public. That is why we cooperate heavily with the Food Bank, Fair Share, Community First, Worcestershire Community Foundation, Worcester City Council and Worcestershire County Council
The space in which we made the biggest impact so far is our COVID-19 response. At the beginning of lockdown, in March, we have felt that it is our duty as a charity to help people, especially because the majority of Eastern European countries were in lockdown from 1985 till 1991, and our community still remembers how to behave in these conditions. We have organised Help Your Neighbour, an initiative which initially was supposed to gather minority volunteers to help minority vulnerable people. Much to our surprise, we have received much more volunteer inquiries than beneficiaries, so we quickly started cooperating with the county council program, Here2Help, and we were witnesses to the most heart-warming moments when migrants were supporting vulnerable members of general public, immediately crushing the walls built through years of misunderstandings.
Help Your Neighbour allowed us to support hundreds of people and demonstrated how huge the will to help is in our community. This has encouraged us to engage our long term dream and open People's European Aid Centre; a place where everyone will be welcomed and where we will be able to channel the energy of more than 3000 migrants from Worcester and over 25000 migrants from our county.
