Unity Centre Glasgow

We’ve been amazed by the response to our recent financial appeal. Thanks to your generous subscription, we’ve been able to reach the target amount of £2,500. This means we have been able to get the outstanding fixtures and fittings needed to open the new charity shop, and are no longer at risk of having the phones cut off in the Centre.

Although the charity shop should now be self-sufficient, the Unity Centre is only able to operate in the way that it does through the generosity of its supporters. Thank you for helping to make it possible.

The UNITY Centre needs your help to stay open.

We need to raise £2,500. Please make a donation today to help us.

Over the three years the Unity Centre has been open in Glasgow over 2,000 asylum seekers and their dependents have registered their personal details with us. On average thirty people come into the Centre every day to sign before they go to report or because they need our help.

At the same time we have given support to over 300 people who have been put into detention without warning by the Home Office. Over half of the people we have helped have been released with their families and returned back to Glasgow to continue their asylum claim.

For the last three years we have been open from 10.30 to 6pm five days a week. And we have done all of this with only volunteers and without funding. No-one is paid to work in the Unity Centre and we rely 100 per cent on donations from supporters.

Over the coming month we hope to start an ambitious new project – the Unity in the Community charity (registered charity SCO40466) which will have a second Unity office and shop at Govan Cross. This charity will allow us extend the sort of services we provide for asylum seekers and refugees and will let us organise more intercultural events to bring people together in the local community.

Please read the full financial appeal here now

For details of how to make a donation click here!

Unity were invited to participate in June’s Govan Fair procession on the 5th of June. With help from the Carnival Arts Centre, our contingent was an awesome sight.

Our float was widely recognised as the missing statue from the square at Govan Cross.

Thanks to all who participated, or who turned out to see the parade! If anyone has any additional photographs, we’d love to see them.

Home Office terrorise family to prove a point!

Mum and son dawn-raided in Sighthill this morning

Support the protest tomorrow morning outside the Home Office in Glasgow at 10.00am.

In a shocking move the Home Ofice Enforcement Team at Brand Street have carried out an unexpected dawn raid on a young mother from the Ivory Coast who had been living in Sighthill.

More information here

At a time when much of the media has been using the economic recession to attack migrants and immigration it becomes more important now than ever to spell out alternatives to current trends in immigration policy.

We are therefore extremely pleased to announce this public meeting Unity has organised for Friday next week. Please help us by publicising it amongst your friends and networks. Thank you.

Friday 8th May 2009: PUBLIC MEETING; Free - All Welcome!

‘FORTRESS EUROPE: How immigration controls destroy civil liberties and human rights’

with Teresa Hayter, author of ‘Open Borders - the case against Immigration Controls’

7.00pm - 9.00pm Wellington Church; 77 Southpark Avenue, off University Avenue, G12 8LE

More information here:

Ministers renege on Dungavel child pledge

Sunday Herald; Sunday 19th April 2009

19 youngsters admitted to detention centre this year

By Catie Guitart

LAST TUESDAY, Sulaiti Wahuyo and her two-year-old son Gabriel were fingerprinted, photographed, issued with a number and an identification card, which must be carried at all times - and then imprisoned.

While not convicted of any crime, as failed asylum-seekers, she and her child were incarcerated in Scotland’s notorious Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre. Their plight is an indictment of the UK government which promised the people of Scotland last year that no more children and their families would be held like prisoners behind barbed wire.

Read more of the Sunday Herald’s article here:

Sulaiti and her 2 year old son Gabriel are currently being detained in Yarl’s Wood IRC and are due to be forcibly removed from UK to Uganda on Wednesday 22th April 2009 20.00 on Flight KQ101 to Kampala. More info here.

SATURDAY 18th APRIL: Edinburgh

BENEFIT CEILIDH raising money for the Unity Centre

Friends of the UNITY Centre have organised a Scottish Ceilidh in Edinburgh to raise money for the UNITY Centre [A ‘Ceilidh (pronounced “Kay-Lee”) is a traditional Scottish social gathering with traditional music, dancing, and storytelling.] More info here

In the next month or so, Unity is hoping to get permission to start a new charity called ‘Unity in the Community’ so that we can extend the support we provide for asylum seekers in Glasgow.

As part of this we have managed to rent the old Govan Integration Network offices at Govan Cross  to use as a charity shop selling clothes, toys, small household goods, books and videos and CDs.

Quite a lot of work is needed to make the offices ready to open as a shop and we hope to start work there on Wednesday 28^th January from about 10.00am.

Read more here

Come along and have a good night out!

Glasgow Student Action for Refugees

presents music from:

MUDHUTS

LEAN TALES

SPEARBRAVE
TAHIR TAHIRA

For a wonderful evening of entertainment to raise money for the Unity Centre

Lean Tales

Mud Huts

At the HALT Bar, Woodlands Road, 

Monday 19^th January

From 8pm

Suggested donation £2.00

Asylum seekers free

Map for The HALT: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=G3+6LF&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=12.687488,28.300781&ie=UTF8&ll=55.870255,-4.274712&spn=0.01175,0.027637&z=15&iwloc=addr